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2021
The Dutch Atlantic and American Life: Beginnings of America in Colonial New Netherland
Roy J. Geraci Lehman College City University of New York, [email protected]
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THE DUTCH ATLANTIC AND AMERICAN LIFE: BEGINNINGS OF AMERICA IN COLONIAL NEW NETHERLAND
by
ROY J. GERACI
A master’s thesis submitted to the Graduate Faculty in history in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts, The City University of New York at Lehman College
2021
©2021
ROY J. GERACI
All Rights Reserved
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CUNY Lehman College The Dutch Atlantic and American Life: Beginnings of America in Colonial New Netherland by Roy J. Geraci Abstract
Advisor: Andrew Robertson Second Reader: Robert Valentine
The Dutch colony of New Netherland was one of the earliest attempts at a non- indigenous life on the east coast of North America. That colony, along with the United Provinces of the Netherlands and Dutch Atlantic as a whole, played crucial roles in the development of what would become the United States. This thesis project examines the significance New Netherland held in American history as well as explores topics which allow for new and inclusive narratives of that history to reach further exploration. Similarly to how individuals from various cultures, ethnicities, and backgrounds all come to exist amongst one another in the United States today so too they did in the Dutch colony between the Delaware and Connecticut Rivers. Through the Dutch Atlantic world connections were made which brought the Americas, Europe, Africa, and Asia together in ways like never before. It was of those connections which caused an array of outsiders to build a new life upon the shores of the Hudson and beyond. Overall, this thesis project shows that New Netherland had a very real presence in colonial America, how the people within it were a diverse group connected to a larger world, and displays why the colony, its inhabitants, and their connections had a lasting effect on the development of the United States of America.
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Table of Contents
Chapter 1: A New Role for New Netherland ...... 5 Chapter 2: People of the Islands, Rivers, Bays, and Beyond ...... 19 Chapter 3: A New Republic and World ...... 35 Chapter 4: Atlantic Creoles, Enslaved Africans, and an American Community ..... 58 Chapter 5: Establishing a Remote Colony on the Hudson ...... 82 Chapter 6: Rowdiness, Religion, and Social Welfare ...... 96 Chapter 7: Blending Continents and Cultures ...... 115 Chapter 8: Vying for Dominance in a Changing World ...... 129 Chapter 9: Colonial New York ...... 149 Chapter 10: The Empire State and Nation ...... 159 Bibliography ...... 171
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Chapter 1: A New Role for New Netherland
There can be many elements considered to have harbored the development of an American identity, yet one of the earliest and essential had for too long and often been overlooked. This was the development of something uniquely American in the Dutch colony of New Netherland with lower Manhattan as the capital of this process. While areas such as New England and Virginia are often locations colloquially understood to be cannon of everything “American,” New Netherland and its succeeding regions are not often common in public discourse. New York is the largest city in what is today the United States as well as one of the oldest. While size isn’t everything in the foundation of America, New Netherland certainly held a magnificent and critical role in that development. The American Revolution was the moment where the United States of America became its own nation but an American identity was something which began to develop long before that. The narrative that something uniquely American developed in New Netherland is both new and of the present, yet it is also one which transcends time. New York and its surrounding area had been in the United States from the very beginning and what began in New Netherland had roots back to the Dutch Republic and Atlantic world. The United States of America is a country within the Americas made up of individuals holding backgrounds from virtually every corner of the globe who have arrived through every means imaginable over the course of multiple centuries. Whether those individuals arrived yesterday, their ancestors had four hundred years ago, or their ancestors in this land precede 1492, all within the United States generally refer to themselves as Americans in some form or another. The United States and the individuals within this nation have a unique history and web of histories, but that is a uniqueness which from its very nature is connected to others throughout the globe. This is the same for every contemporary nation in the Americas and all share the year 1492 as one in which individuals from America, Europe, and Africa all came into contact with one another for the first time. What happened in 1492 was the continuation of a process which had already begun by European actors, but from then on the processes which
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developed within those three geographic locations and beyond would be changed permanently. This would come to include many dynamics such as power structures, genetic makeups, societies, and cultures. Most of the land which had come to encompass the current United States held minor roles of contact and influence throughout roughly the first two centuries of these processes. During those first two centuries certain processes began in the Americas under Iberian influence which were similar and connected to those which came later in the colonies to the north. One of those processes was the development of a concept referred to as mestizaje. In Latin American studies the term mestizaje had origins in the 1925 writings of Jose Vasconcelos who envisioned a society made up of individuals with the combined ethnic roots of the Americas, Africa, Europe, and Asia. Ideas on mestizaje thought came about again during the Chicano movement of the 1960s. As the years progressed this idea came to be studied through various lenses and is one much more commonly discussed in the academic world internationally. In his work Before Mestizaje: The Frontiers of Race and Caste in Colonial Mexico, Ben Vinson III wrote that the early twentieth century idea of mestizaje “represented one of the strongest moves toward imagining racial conformity and consensus that Latin America had ever seen.”1 The idea itself is one Vinson had called “one of the most powerful socio-racial ideologies to emerge in world history during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.” He pointed out that there exists a difference between the actual “racial mixture” which played out during Latin America’s colonial era and the modern ideological form which had developed regarding the term and processes.2 Both have valid places in the study and developments of racial ideologies which exist, and an important take away from the ideas of mestizaje both past and present is that it counters that of a “racial” purity or superiority. What occurred throughout Latin America during its history from 1492 onward was the mixture of people from various societies, ethnicities, and cultures into ones with blended attributes. The ideas which exist surrounding mestizaje have not widely been used to describe occurrences within the regions north of Mexico, but in the
1 Ben Vinson III, Before Mestizaje: The Frontiers of Race and Caste in Colonial Mexico, (New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 2017), 37, hereafter cited as Vinson, Before Mestizaje. 2 Ibid, 17. 6
contemporary era it could be a useful aid in understanding both the past and present as well as the interconnectedness which exist between the two. What occurred in North America, and particularly the colonial and future United States, was not identical to that which occurred within the lands to its south but many things could be said about how those processes were connected to a greater stream of history. This is a stream in which the nation that came to be called the United States of America was most certainly involved. A non-controversial idea in the United States somewhat similar to that of mestizaje would be the idea of a “melting pot.” This common term is one used to describe a people of many ethnicities and cultures who came together whether it be amalgamation or assimilation into one single American. The melting pot analogy is useful in describing the development of an American identity, but it could also be misleading. Within the United States there is a reality of one America which is known colloquially to all within it and abroad, that which has its basis in the constitution, government, and shared history. In this aspect the common phrase e pluribus unum perfectly represents the one and all of the United States of America. Within this one America that all within hold a shared and connected history however, there exist a variety of other Americas, which do not neatly fit into this melting pot analogy. Within the United States today there exists a contradiction to the idea of the melting pot in that there are those that continue to identify with certain ethnic backgrounds based on a long history of divisions. This one society still grapples with those divisions in various aspects which is hardly going away any time soon. To simplify distinct groups that exist within this one America terms like European-American, African-American, Native American, and Asian-American can be given, but these are not ones colloquially agreed on. Americans themselves use various terms such as “White,” “Black,” “Hispanic,” “Latino,” “Indian,” and a wide variety more. The term European-American is not none necessarily used by all those of European descent, but ones such as Irish-American, Italian- American, German-American, and et cetera have been used much more commonly throughout history. Similar hyphenations regarding ethnic area or nation of origin are also commonly used among other groups such as Nigerian-American, Chinese- American, Cuban-American, and the like. The purpose of this work is not to explore the 7
differences within the many micro-Americas envisioned by those within but to explain and explore the connectedness which exists throughout the greater whole of the United States. To go about this one can choose almost any area in the history of the land which today had come to encompass an area even larger than that between the Atlantic and Pacific. The focus of this work is the New York Metropolitan area because for many it is the first stop on either their own or their ancestors American journey. This geographic location has one of the longest continuous roles in American history and existed as one of the greatest examples of what America had developed into today. While the melting pot is a great analogy to explain what America was, is, and how it developed over time, it is one which still does not fully explain how the various meanings of America exist to different peoples within it. For a variety of reasons the term “multiculturalism” is one which had been met with both acceptance and hostility depending on an individual or a groups perception of what or whom this one America was or is supposed to represent. The hostilities, although not always, invoke the long history of divisions which had been made between various groups of Americans throughout American history. While some may feel that multiculturalism is un-American and that it takes away from what defines America, they tend to miss the point that the United States had been a multi-cultural place continuously since long before its foundation. This is where New Netherland comes into the mix. New Netherland had a large role in the development of America, a role that many today continue to remain unaware of. The Dutch colony, which existed before many others in the colonial United States, encompassed a piece of land even larger than the future New York Metropolitan area. This was also a section of land which following its capture was divided up into various separate English colonies. Despite being under Dutch rule with the generally accepted culture and power structure belonging to them, New Netherland had been a multiethnic place where different cultures intersected and blended. Even before Europeans arrived various indigenous individuals interacted with each other, and by being introduced to the Atlantic world by the Dutch these interactions expanded exponentially. Assumptions had been that New Netherland was a Dutch enclave, yet so many different people and elements in that area weren’t Dutch at all. In New Netherland various peoples and 8
objects came from places throughout America, Africa, and Europe to interact under a Dutch proclaimed authority, but they became something uniquely American. The fact that something new and unique was developing in the vicinity of both Virginia and New England at the same time as the early development of an English America means that understanding New Netherland is crucial to understanding what came after. In order to truly grasp this, as Joyce Goodfriend argued, one must strip “away the layers of misinformation and misrepresentation that still endure” in understanding New Netherland’s relevance.3 As alluded to there are a number of issues and problems which have come to be associated with the study of New Netherland which have only begun to be addressed relatively recently. Over the past decades many issues relating to the Dutch colony have increasingly been brought up, countered, debated, and discussed. These issues still have some way to go before they enter a stronger level of discourse among the general public however, but much improvement is being done. One of the oldest problems that existed was the presence of a narrative that revolved around a “triumphant English.” This could be understood in the words of Oliver Rink who explained that “the surrender of New Netherland symbolized more than a military conquest—it symbolized the triumph of Anglo-American culture.”4 Contemporarily the triumph of that culture had begun to be contested and many more people have begun to find that important parts of themselves could be found all throughout history. The idea of a “triumphant English” can be understood through the process of anglicization that Joyce Goodfriend addressed in a number of her works. It was in her study on “Writing/Righting Dutch Colonial History” that she identified the narrative of a “triumphant English” as an inaccurate wrong which must be righted. Anglicization created an “Anglocentric rendering of the history of New York and adjacent regions,”5 and those renderings affected how New Yorkers and Americans viewed themselves and the world around them for centuries. Following an English takeover of New Netherland
3 Joyce D. Goodfriend, "Writing/Righting Dutch Colonial History," New York History 80, no. 1 (1999), 6, hereafter cited as Goodfriend, “Writing/Righting Dutch Colonial History.” 4 Oliver A. Rink, Holland on the Hudson: An Economic and Social History of Dutch New York, (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1989), 22, hereafter cited as Rink, Holland on the Hudson. 5 Goodfriend, “Writing/Righting Dutch Colonial History,” 6. 9
all residents of the area came under an English domain of influence. There were already various ethnic communities in the area, but following 1664 the Dutch community too became one which had to adapt to exist under a realm controlled by foreigners. Dutch was no longer accepted as a social and cultural norm, and to make a place in their new society all previous inhabitants had to lean to exist in an English world. The idea of the Dutch in New York was reduced to in the words of Goodfriend “comic figures, relics of a remote past”6 in the face of the new English and then American present. Russell Shorto wrote that those individuals of British descent in the early United Stated still provided biased perspectives based on attitudes which came out of the anglicization of American culture despite being vehemently opposed to their former colonial authority. One of the first to bring the idea of a Dutch past back into the light was Washington Irving, but he still looked at that past through the eyes of a triumphant victor in a war of culture. The work of Irving in relation to New York history was referred to by Russell Shorto as a “historical burlesque never intended by its author to be taken as fact”, which “muddied any attempt to understand what had actually gone on in the Manhattan-based settlement. The colony was reduced by popular culture to a few random, floating facts.”7 Despite being a heavily satirical book, Irving’s A History of New York from the Beginning of the World to the End of the Dutch Dynasty cemented those random floating facts into the public’s understanding of New Netherland if such an understanding existed at all. Within A History of New York, which Irving wrote posing historian Diedrich Knickerbocker, colony directors Willem Kieft, Wouter Van Twiller, and Peter Stuyvesant assumed the characters of “William the Testy,” “Walter the Doubter,” and “Peter the Headstrong.” Of the many caricatures presented in Knickerbocker’s History included a glutenous pipe smoking Van Twiller, whom it was claimed made only one decision during his time as director-general. This involved a financial dispute
6 Goodfriend, “Writing/ Righting Dutch Colonial History,” 6. 7 Russell Shorto, Island at the Center of the World: The Epic Story of Dutch Manhattan and the Forgotten Colony That Shaped America, (New York, NY: Vintage Books, 2004), 3, hereafter cited as Shorto, Island at the Center of the World. 10
between two burghers, which Van Twiller apparently settled while eating pudding and drinking milk.8 As Diedrich Knickerbocker, Irving claimed to be following in the footsteps of Herodotus, Xenophon, Sallust, Thucydides, Tacitus, and Livy, which was to reinforce the idea that Knickerbocker too was going to produce a work of magnificent magnitude. In writing a history of New York from “the beginning of the world,” Irving was even able to make the claim that “America was discovered by Noah,” which had no basis in the realm of history. Washington Irving wrote A History of New York at a time that the idea of an American identity was still being developed, understood, accepted, and agreed upon. His work presented a history of events which ended with an English triumph, which in turn led to the ability of an Anglo-American narrative to triumph. Irving introduced a history of myths he could sell to the masses, and while it may not have intended to be taken word for word, it left a heavy mark on public perceptions of a Dutch influence on the American past and present. These perceptions are vividly present in the faults of some past historiography and understandings. Like Irving, past historians and historiographers have failed to see a significant Dutch contribution to American history because those perceiving that history were in large Englishmen and those of British descent. With the process of anglicization and the satirical representation of New Netherland established as some of the layers of misrepresentations that must be stripped, a basis and argument for the New Netherland’s significance can reach a new vitality.9 The relevancy of a Dutch active presence in American history can be explained and elaborated upon once removing the vail of anglicization, but issues regarding New Netherland still persist. One of these issues concerned the idea that New Netherland was some sort of Holland on the Hudson. This is a subject brought up by various historians, and the topic is one which was used as the title of Oliver Rink’s work Holland on the Hudson. It is no secret that Holland is often used to describe the Netherlands as a whole by the general public outside of the Netherlands. Referring to that entire country
8 Washington Irving, “A History of New York,” in History, Tales, and Sketches, (New York, NY: Literary Classics of the United States, Inc., 1983), 466-467, hereafter cited as Irving, “A History of New York.” 9 Irving, “A History of New York,” 378-379. 11
by the name of a location which today exists as only two Dutch provinces in the Netherlands however, is a neglectful mistake. To name the colony of New Netherland or the Netherlands themselves as places which mirror just one specific location of a larger realm can come to ignore the contribution and existence of many others which were present. In recent years the authors of a number of studies had took aim at this idea in an effort to truly and more fully understand who and what existed in New Netherland. Jan Folkerts in his “Reflecting Patria: New Light on New Netherland Demography and Culture” wrote that the idea of a modern Dutch democracy had regional origins in the eastern provinces of Gelderland and Overijssel, not Holland as it had previously been believed. With the idea of a democratic process as just one example, it can be considered neglectful to exclude Dutch provinces outside of Holland or Zeeland when discussing the greater Dutch colonial world. Folkerts argued that “to understand the history of New Netherland and Dutch New York, the knowledge of the places of origin of the immigrants from the Dutch Republic is fundamental.”10 He also argued that when looking at the makeup of European peoples in New Netherland, it is important to separate New Amsterdam from the rest of the colony. The capital at lower Manhattan was the most diverse place within the colony, and Folkerts felt historians like Oliver Rink and David Stephen Cohen among others failed to separate the capital from the larger colony. Separating the points of migration and connections may also provide different insight into understanding the relationship between the fur trade and agriculture as they related to different peoples involved in New Netherland’s existence. Scholars such as Folkerts argued that an obsession with the fur trade led historians of New Netherland to ignore other elements of Dutch colonial lives in the area. In discussing that topic Folkerts referenced U.P. Hendrick and the more recent R. Balmer. Hendrick stated in his A History of Agriculture in New York that “it remained for the English to give life to agriculture in the colony,” and Balmer in 1989 stated that “the Dutch of New Netherland had shielded away from agriculture.”11 Understanding regional differences in the
10 Jan Folkerts, "Reflecting Patria: New Light on New Netherland Demography and Culture," New York History 91, no. 2 (2010), 93-95, hereafter cited as Folkerts, “Reflecting Patria.” 11 Ibid, 95. 12
Netherlands can be an essential tool to understanding the Dutch-American society which developed in the area between the Connecticut and Delaware Rivers. Based on the research of Folkerts it could be understood that “the culture and society of rural New Netherland and colonial New York reflected the ways and customs of the inland provinces of the Dutch Republic, rather than the urban culture of the province of Holland.”12 In a chart compiled by Folkerts analyzing immigration to New Netherland between 1657 to 1664, he found that the largest group of immigrants came from the Dutch inland provinces, the second largest group came from outside the Netherlands, and immigrants from the coastal provinces made up the lowest percentage of immigrants. He also looked at the connection between the percentage of families which immigrated and the percentage of farmers, both of which followed a trend of immigration. By finding that farmers from the inland provinces were beginning to make up the largest group of immigrants in New Netherland’s later years, Folkerts created an image somewhat different than others who had much more emphasis on Holland and the fur trade. While it could be said that the fur trade in New Netherland was somewhat in decline by the end of the Dutch era, Folkerts pointed out that even when Kiliaen van Rensselaer was still running things in his patroonship up the Hudson, he preferred to send individuals from his home province of Overijssel and other inland areas to work his land.13 After making it clear that large percentages of Dutch men and families came from outside the coastal provinces such as Holland and Zeeland, Folkerts went on to describe how they created a landscape and material goods which resembled that of their inland home provinces. He noted the construction of a large barn door called a baanderdeur for a Jan Seubering at his Midwood, Long Island home, which was to resemble that done at his farm in Drenthe. He continued that because this type of barn door was virtually unknown in Holland, the carpenter too would have also had to be from Seubering’s original locality.14 Migrating his discussion from structures to the actual agricultural processes, Folkerts referenced a 1667 letter from Peter Stuyvesant to the
12 Folkerts, "Reflecting Patria," 98. 13 Ibid, 101-103. 14 Ibid, 103. 13
Duke of York. Stuyvesant in his letter requested from the new colonial lord an approval to trade with the Netherlands for Dutch farming equipment. The former director-general argued that this was necessary because “their manner of agriculture is wholly different form the way practiced by the English nation.” In referencing such Dutch agricultural utensils Folkerts wrote that the sith and mathook were especially common tools of the inland provinces. They were principally common in Gelderland, of which province held the largest percentage of inland migrants. These inland Dutch peoples participated in agriculture up and down the Hudson as well as western Long Island. There they established agricultural lives similar to those in patria, yet with new and uniquely American elements becoming incorporated into that Dutch-American presence. Separating the inland provinces indeed helps to more fully understand an agricultural presence in New Netherland, and the area surrounding the capital was certainly different from its center. New Amsterdam was a central hub of the Dutch fur trade among others centered on Dutch trans-Continental connections. Separating the capital from the rest of the colony does not take away any of the relevance and significance either region held, and both were still heavily connected. The southern tip of Manhattan became a port of the Atlantic world, and as Folkerts wrote “nowhere else in the colony was the number of foreigners comparable” and nowhere else “in New Netherland attracted so few people from the inland provinces” than New Amsterdam. Folkerts argued that “while there never existed a real “Holland on the Hudson,” the colonial capital was rightfully named after its mother city, being a small but real Amsterdam in the New World.”15 Despite criticizing David Stephen Cohen for not emphasizing Dutch immigrants of the inland provinces, he still noted Cohen’s ability to describe non Dutch peoples who came to exist in the colony. The work of Cohen referenced by Folkerts was his “How Dutch Were the Dutch of New Netherland?” within which Cohen compiled lists of individuals who came to settle in the colony. These were lists which a person’s nationality, region, province, home city, city of embarkment, and even occupation were included. Cohen was able to put together such lists through genealogies, ship passenger data, colonial
15 Folkerts, "Reflecting Patria," 107-108. 14
documents, and histories to “determine the exact origin of more than 900 settlers who immigrated to New Netherland in the seventeenth century.”16 Based not just on his findings but on what he perceived were inaccurate conclusions of his predecessors, Cohen argued that previous historians had missed a cultural process which shaped a region influenced by Dutch culture. To truly understand such a process, Cohen further argued that the cultural process which shaped Dutch culture in New York and New Jersey could only be truly understood by looking “at the cultural boundaries and how they relate to the place of origin of Dutch settlers in New Netherland.”17 Anne-Marie Cantwell and Diana diZerega Wall also brought up issue with the idea of a “Holland on the Hudson” in their “Landscapes and Other Objects: Creating Dutch New Netherland.” One side of the argument was that the colony of New Netherland was “more Netherlandish than new,” and another was that life in the frontier “was similar to, but at the same time very different from, life in patria.”18 To make their study the authors looked at the importance and use of the material culture which settlers in New Netherland used to construct their lives in the new colony. According to Cantwell and diZerega Wall, almost half of the individuals in New Netherland were not from the Netherlands at all. To be fair to Folkerts, the authors were able to still note that at the time of Dutch New Netherland, many Dutch people still identified with their home provinces over the Republic. This was a republic where throughout which there existed different languages, coinage, religion, laws, and customs while the people themselves were united primarily by a northern European Protestant social order. While the Dutch Republic was incredibly diverse, the authors argued that New Netherland was even more so due to the presence of Africans and indigenous Americans. It was the presence of all these diverse parties which became an important and unique factor in the Dutch process of refashioning the woodlands of the Hudson into New Netherland.19 A key element in the background of their study was the adaption to a new environment.
16 David Steven Cohen, "How Dutch Were the Dutch of New Netherland?," New York History 62, no. 1 (1981), 46, hereafter cited as Cohen, "How Dutch Were the Dutch of New Netherland?” 17 Ibid, 60. 18 Anne-Marie Cantwell and Diana diZerega Wall, Unearthing Gotham: The Archeology of New York City, (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2001), 315, hereafter cited as Cantwell and diZerega Wall, Unearthing Gotham. 19 Ibid, 316-317. 15
Although much material culture studied had roots in the Netherlands much of it developed into something new in America, which was not exactly fully explored by Folkerts. This North American colony operated by the Dutch known as New Netherland was part of a larger Atlantic world, and it very much so possessed many attributes of that world. While from the period between 1609 and 1664 New Netherland could be referred to as a Dutch colony, it was hardly a colony of the coastal and inland provinces alone. Because of the seventeenth century connections the Netherlands made in the Atlantic world, individuals such as Russell Shorto could argue that “Manhattan is where America began.”20 This was not an America solely based on European values, cultures, and norms, but one influenced by a blending which came about through a process of multi-continental interactions. Cantwell and diZerega Wall wrote that “no culture is ever fixed or homogenous; instead, all cultures are always changing and always diverse.”21 Being a colony on the North American Atlantic, where different European, Indigenous- American, and African peoples were constantly vying for a survival, existence, and prosperity, New Netherland experienced this amalgamation of diverse and constantly changing cultures. The Dutch brought to New Netherland and the future New York City Metropolitan area a connection to the greater Atlantic world made up of various separate yet interconnected groups of peoples. New Netherland was part of a larger Dutch overseas network which included not just America, Africa, and Europe, but Asia as well. With the establishment of the West India Company New Netherland would be cemented into the business world that the company was building. It was under the operation of the Dutch West India Company that South America, the Caribbean, West Africa, and North America all became intertwined and interconnected on and around Manhattan through cross-cultural networks already in existence prior to the establishment of a Dutch Atlantic. With the introduction to the Atlantic world under the Dutch much earlier than the English, traits which developed in New Netherland were somewhat different than those which developed in the English colonies to the north and south.
20 Shorto, Island at the Center of the World, 3. 21 Cantwell and diZerega Wall, Unearthing Gotham, 315-317. 16
Russell Shorto may have believed that Manhattan was a birthplace of America, yet that case could be made for many places, and it is also essential to note that the America Shorto was writing about was most certainly the United States. Throughout this work, we shall see that processes which led to an American identity within the United States began to develop long before the American Revolution. Being that New Netherland and its successor areas were present in what became the future United States from the very beginning, they certainly played a role in such a process of developments if one existed. Many starting points could be given for the development of such an identity to have begun, but history is an ever flowing and interconnected stream. To put one particular starting point on global a process of development and trend as if it was unaffected by what came before and outside of it would be overzealous at the least. Obviously it had already been made abundantly clear the people of Netherlands had something to do with this development as did those of a variety of regions. Various events occurred within Europe which brought Europeans to America, and it was in America that they began to develop into something American with critical help from non-Europeans. The presence of these non-Europeans was vital for their survival and sustainability in America, especially in the earliest years of their arrival. In those earliest years of European interactions in America no people were more responsible for their success and survival than Native Americans, the indigenous people present within the Americas for thousands of years. While they have become diminished into a minority so small today that they now make up less than two percent of the United States population, the contributions they made to the development of that country will be significant and visible for as long as that country exists as a current nation. Concepts which interject the participation of indigenous individuals recently began to arrive more abundantly in narratives, which had even finally entered a public sphere where many individuals have begun to acknowledge them. One example of this would be the recent trend to supplement the U.S. holiday of Columbus Day with one titled Indigenous Peoples’ Day. Indigenous Peoples’ Day had inspired many individuals of the general public to acknowledge and learn more about the indigenous people of a land which today had become something like a global empire. Despite the progress 17
made, the issue of Columbus still muddies the waters of understanding. Too often back- and-forth partisan discourse behind what exactly a Columbus meant in the history of America overpowers any concise discussion on indigenous people themselves. A proclamation often heard in common spaces today when addressing Columbus was one which dealt with the idea of genocide, yet the entire extermination of a people was not the goal of Columbus nor was he himself successful in doing so. Many people now take aim at the notion that Columbus “discovered” America, but shifting the narrative to one of genocide does not lead down the road to new understanding, it simply shifts the poles. Scholars today have begun to bring up the idea that the ultimate goal of the Genoese navigator named Columbus was to convert Asians and reconquer Jerusalem. Columbus was one man, and it takes a collective of individuals to commit a genocide. Despite proclaiming the Americas for the Spanish kingdoms which sponsored him and committing egregious acts in their names, Columbus failed in his grandiose dreams and even at his post of governance. Following his third voyage Columbus was even jailed for his brutal actions and while he was later eventually able to make a fourth voyage he died never knowing he had reached what became known as the Americas. Columbus came out of the larger trend of Italian seafaring merchants and navigators who played a major role in greater European expansion during that era. He was not the only one of his time invested in expanding, and without him some other European would have likely reached the Americas within a few years anyway. Before delving into what brought Europeans to the area that came to be known as New Netherland, the groups of indigenous individuals that had already long existed there deserve close attention. Unlike how some seventeenth century European writers made the mid-Atlantic region out to be, it was not a virgin land waiting to be filled. Individuals indigenous to the Americas existed long before any bodies from the eastern hemisphere arrived within lands across the Atlantic, and it would be unfair to begin a colonial history of what developed into the United States without first discussing the people who were originally there.
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Chapter 2: People of the Islands, Rivers, Bays, and Beyond
William A. Starna believed it was important to consider that indigenous individuals were “active participants in the maelstrom of events around them.”22 Raising the role of native peoples into that of active participation fixes a problem under which so many histories and descriptions of New Netherland have failed to include. Reflecting a theme that the indigenous peoples are often overlooked in the study of New Netherland and the surrounding area, Starna critiqued Joyce Goodfriend’s “Writing/Righting Dutch Colonial History.” He argued that while Goodfriend dedicated twenty-three pages to redeem the importance of a Dutch contribution to America, she devoted little more than one page to the topic of Native American-Dutch relations.23 In her study of the historiography relating to Dutch colonial history little was said on Native Americans, but in defense of Goodfriend her study was primarily focused on Dutch influence. When Native Americans are referenced in Goodfriend’s work, they are described in relation to their presence within works on the Dutch period. She did acknowledge that previous historiography on the indigenous peoples of New Netherland and the area around it had been limited. She also acknowledged that this was something which began to change in recent years. In the words of Goodfriend, “the newest scholarship on Dutch-Indian relations casts much needed light on the intercultural aspects of these encounters,” and she listed some studies involved in this light casting. Just as Goodfriend wrote that the majority of Dutch in New Netherland “stood their distance and manifested little curiosity about the beliefs of their frontier neighbors,”24 so too do her own studies on the area surrounding New York and New Netherland. This is not necessarily an issue because her works, again, are not primarily centered on topics related to indigenous individuals. Of course more discourse on Native Americans could only make her works more fruitful and in-depth, but she still discussed those topics where they were relevant to her certainly fulfilling narratives.
22 William A. Starna, "Assessing American Indian-Dutch Studies: Missed and Missing Opportunities," New York History 84, no. 1 (2003), 6, hereafter cited as Starna, “Assessing American Indian-Dutch Studies.” 23 Ibid, 9. 24 Goodfriend, “Writing/Righting Dutch Colonial History,” 14-16. 19
In Starna’s assessment of the historiography regarding Native America-Dutch relations he wrote that the first scholarly inquiry into the subject came in Jean E. Murray’s 1938 work in the Canadian Historical Review titled “The Early Fur Trade in New France and New Netherland.” He then went on to argue in his 2003 study that the last groundbreaking work on the topic was Allen Trelease’s 1960 Indian Affairs in Colonial New York: The Seventeenth Century, despite the fact that it had by today become dated. According to Starna, since Trelease’s work there had been only about forty studies composed of varying quality which covered the topic of Native American- Dutch relations. Starna went on to say that while these works made significant contributions to a contemporary understanding of those relations, they remain to contain problems and were often repetitive due to an approach which “necessitates laying down a foundation of previous work.”25 The failure of many descriptive histories, according to Starna, in part had to do with the reliance of historians “on a limited set of secondary sources,” and the failure “to employ the full range of primary sources as compared to, and interpreted within, the large corpus of authoritative anthropological and other related literature.” In order to obtain a more well-rounded study Starna proposed where to begin. The first step for an inquiry into Native American-Dutch relations, he argued, would be to “locate and describe the Indians who resided within the bounds of New Netherland and the surrounding area.” He continued that “by combining the data derived from history, ethnology, archeology, and linguistics, a reasonable and careful reconstruction of the past can be fashioned.”26 In referencing a work of Jack Campusi, Starna in his study cautioned that social, economic, political, and religious boundaries are not fixed. Although these boundaries may exist in any given time, they could frequently be contested from within while unrecognized and ignored from outside. Campusi and Starna’s caution about changing boundaries was in relation to the former’s study on Oneida communities, but it is relevant to the larger area of Native American-Dutch relations as well. While often times native groups had been discussed as bands, tribes, and nations, they did not always occupy well defined localities nor
25 Starna, "Assessing American Indian-Dutch Studies," 5-8. 26 Ibid, 9-10. 20
always operate as monolithic entities.27 Thus while people may often be described to have belonged to one specific group and that group specific to a geographic location, those specifics are not always fixed. Three important dates in the history of New Netherland include 1609, 1524, and 1492, but these are hardly the single dates that can be used. The story of humans in what was to become the New Netherland go back about eleven thousand years, and even then people were from far and wide. These earliest individuals to the area knew a completely different landscape, one filled with glaciers and a very distant shoreline. Those individuals are referred to as Paleo-Indians and according to archeologists their culture was not significantly distinct to that of their fellows throughout North America. There are a number of Paleo-Indian sites within what is today New York City, and the artifacts left behind tell us a little bit about how they lived. The eleven thousand year old campsite known as Port Mobile existed where today rests an energy pipeline terminal on Staten Island, and the site yielded a multitude of artifacts. Of these are included twenty-one fluted points of the Clovis type and over 120 stone tools. The materials to create some of these artifacts came from as far away as Pennsylvania and half way up the Hudson. The authors of Unearthing Gotham hypothesized that artisans may have either traveled far and wide to distant sites or joined larger groups of allies and relatives to exchange various goods. At this site there are also evidences of shaft preparation for the fluted points, scrappers for working animal skins, knives, and drills. In Unearthing Gotham it was suggested that this site may have been more than just a hunting site, and that men, women, and children possibly all came to the area. For the most part however, this is much of the physical evidence that has come from Paleo-Indian sites such as Port Mobile in New York and many gaps still remain. What can be said though is this: the first people in New York came from far away, and those kinds of interactions continued into the present day.28 It was during the Archaic period, about 10,000 to 3,700 years ago, that the land around New York had begun to resemble what it did in 1609. Archaic sites had been found throughout New York City, and one of the most interesting is that at Inwood Hill
27 Starna, "Assessing American Indian-Dutch Studies," 14-15. 28 Cantwell and diZerega Wall, Unearthing Gotham, 38-44. 21
Park (the only wooded area left on Manhattan Island today). Finds at this site included the remains of shellfish, spear points, knives, stone axe heads, and the like.29 Authors of Unearthing Gotham referred to the Archaic period as an “empty quarter.” Until more evidence can be found, it largely represented the transition from Paleo-Indians into more complex societies as they adapted to the changing environment and landscape. During the Woodland phase between about 3,700 and 400 years ago, the peoples encountered by Europeans had begun to develop their distinct cultures. Around the beginning of this period clay cooking and storage pots began to develop which is a distinct marker in the development of any complex society. This was a period defined by the interaction of people both distant and near, population growth, the development of new rituals, and that of a mostly sedentary lifestyle. While coastal peoples of what grew into Lenapehoking are often considered outliers and overlooked for focus on the great inland societies, those of the islands, riverheads, and bays were still very rich indeed. Archeological evidence suggested people there had a “thriving adaptation to a rich coastal environment.”30 It had been suggested that, based on archeological evidence, the people from around the future area of New York City lived in small scale and largely egalitarian communities, which were supported by hunting, fishing, and gathering. They also had a modest material culture and objects of value to them. These peoples had contacts with their neighbors, and were aware of events occurring within the more “sophisticated” cultures inland. After all, it only took a few weeks’ journey to reach many of those different cultures.31 Archeological data from the Woodland period exist in abundance. Artifacts from Middle Woodland sites in Queens and the Bronx suggested contact with regions much further inland, which included over 150 plates of sheet mica not native to the region. It had also been suggested that smoking most likely spread to the coast from the interior. The later Woodland period saw the development of bows and arrows as well as pottery and cookware become more complex. Evidence also exists for developed slash-and- burn cultivation techniques of maize, squash, and beans. The introduction of maize to
29 Cantwell and diZerega Wall, Unearthing Gotham, 57. 30 Ibid, 77. 31 Ibid, 73-77. 22
areas within greater New York suggest long distance trade, as maize made its way gradually up from Mesoamerica. Of one very revealing finds from this phase included the grave of a child aged about six years. The site was uncovered from the Ward’s Point site on the southern tip of Staten Island. This child was buried with a number of offerings, many items of which were almost never found around New York coastal sites of the period. His necklace was made up of thousands of pieces of shell beads native to the warm coastal waters between Virginia and Florida. He was also buried with an exotic smoking pipe which resembled that of Hopewellian peoples from the Midwest. Burial sites and graves provide rich information on people of the past and how they lived their lives. As in the case for the child of Ward’s Point items of material culture were uncovered. These items provide examples not only of funerary customs, long distance travel, and the use of smokable materials, but so much more.32 Unfortunately, while burials provide some of the best evidence for Woodland era peoples, many had been bulldozed and “treated with astonishing disrespect” by developers and humans of past and present. Of these neglectful and destructive humans was Robert Moses, who distinguished archeologist Ralph Solecki once called the “one man who can be blamed for more single handed destruction of archeological sites in the New York City area” than any other. During the seventeenth century a Dutchman named Jasper Dankaerts wrote that native burial places could be found “everywhere in the woods, but especially along the banks of rivers or streams where they live or have lived.” Of these once vastly numerous sites was the late Woodland settlement in the area around the JFK airport and the Aqueduct Racetrack of today. The site was discovered around the time Robert Moses was planning to build numerous roads around the area, which caused much evidence of the location to be lost. As Dankaerts observed even back in the late seventeenth century, these sites were all over but their destruction has now become a mystery. Every plot of land where the first peoples lived and died is now covered by developments of the modern American from Jersey City to Montauk Point, Coney Island to Westchester, and sea to shining sea. The remains and resting places of people long past have now almost entirely been
32 Cantwell and diZerega Wall, Unearthing Gotham, 77-94. 23
desecrated and destroyed, and some of what does remain now rests in museums and labs of the modern American.33 Archeology provides much insight into the people who were here before. Where lack of narratives and written records exist, the use of archeology helps to piece together a more accurate story of what existed. While much can now be said there is still so much yet to be studied. William Starna suggested the revitalization of primary sources to be used alongside a variety of different anthropological data. The primary sources themselves could hardly be reliable based on their origins, and secondary sources without any use of elements such as archology and et cetera leave much more issues to be desired and fulfilled. The biggest reason primary sources are so limited is because they were written by newcomers who did not fully understand the indigenous world upon which they began to interject themselves. Unlike the Spanish, the Dutch were not interested in total conquest and to obtain their goals did not necessarily mean fully getting to know thy neighbor. Interactions between Europeans and natives were almost exclusively for the purposes of trade which did not require either party to become better acquainted with the other. The Dutch who did write about the indigenous people of the area were also vividly biased, which also makes their findings and descriptions questionable. The bias seen as standard is exemplified by the writings Dominie Michaelius who referred to native peoples as “entirely savage and wild,” “uncivil and stupid as garden poles, proficient in all wickedness and godlessness; devilish men, who serve nobody but the Devil.”34 The description by Michaelius reflected the idea held by the Europeans that natives were savages, by which they are referred to throughout primary source documents. One of the earliest surviving documents describing native peoples of the area was the logbook of Robert Juet, throughout which natives are constantly called “savages.” As more Dutch came to the area of New Netherland the standard variant of term “savage” used became wilden or “wild ones.” It is this latter term which made its way into the title of Adriaen van der Donk’s in-depth description of
33 Cantwell and diZerega Wall, Unearthing Gotham, 96-98. 34 John Franklin Jameson, ed. Original Narratives of Early American History: Narratives of New Netherland 1609-1664, (New York, NY: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1909), 127-128, hereafter cited as Jameson, Narratives of New Netherland. 24
the people he encountered: “Of their bodily form and appearance, and why we named them (Wilden) Wild Men.” To exemplify how their understanding of each other was limited through communication failures one could go back to Michaelius’ description. There he wrote that the native languages encountered were “entirely peculiar.” He acknowledged the claim that some of his compatriots found native languages easy but countered their claims by adding that those who spoke with natives often “fail greatly in the pronunciation, and speak a broken language.” While “one can easily learn as much as is sufficient for the purposes of trading” Michaelius wrote “this is done almost as much by signs with the thumb and fingers as by speaking.” Thus while Europeans were able to communicate well enough with natives to trade, the Dominie concluded that even they are “bewildered when they hear the savages talking amongst themselves.”35 Van der Donk also wrote of the lacking communication which existed where he explained that not many Europeans learned the languages of the natives. The Europeans that did learn to communicate were not of education and therefore unable to put together grammatical rules on native languages, nor instruct others in the speech.36 Due to this lack of linguistic understanding the narratives and descriptions put forth by the Europeans who interacted with indigenous individuals first hand should never be taken as vividly accurate. Linguistics themselves could tell much about interactions between natives and Europeans, but it does not make the descriptions of early European encounters any more reliable. Interestingly, William Starna brought up some recent studies which have begun to look at evidence of a pidgin Delaware contact language derived from Unami, which was used throughout New Netherland and the other middle Atlantic region. The pidgin dialect was used by both Unami and Munsee speakers, and picked up by the Dutch, Swedes, and English although it was not likely spoken by more than a few thousand individuals. Because there is not much evidence to suggest any kind of pidgin
35 Jameson, Narratives of New Netherland. 127-128. 36 Adriaen Van der Donk, “Of the Different Nations and Languages,” Description of the New Netherlands, Translated by Jeremiah Johnson, (New York, NY: Cosimo Classics, 1655), hereafter cited as Van der Donk, “Of the Different Nations and Languages.” 25
among Iroquois people, it had been suggested that a small number of Dutch traders had made efforts to learn languages such as Mohawk, while others would have made use of interpreters. It is also known that some Dutch individuals did have children with indigenous individuals, thus it is also possible that a small number of these children were raised bilingual and acted as translators.37 The development of pidgin dialects is an essential element in the expansion of colonial societies based on a business enterprise throughout the world. The existence of a pidgin dialect among the Lenape people further emphasized a relationship specifically based on trading interactions among natives of New Netherland and Europeans. The seventeenth century, especially in the period of New Netherland’s existence, was a time where Europeans were the newest of newcomers in the northeast. They barely knew who they were interacting with and their descriptions reflect that. Robert Juet and Dominie Michaelius’ early descriptions exemplified that. The description done by the former however gave much oversight into the two kinds of interactions Europeans and the Dutch would have between each other throughout New Netherlands’s existence: trade and violence. Through Juet we get an initial picture of the people of Lenapehoking and those up the river. To provide insight into who these indigenous individuals were and how they lived their lives one must seek primary sources elsewhere. Adriaen van Der Donk’s description had already briefly been mentioned and it can be used in comparison with another description of Native Americans provided by Daniel Denton to at least achieve some insight into the questions which arise. Primary sources such as Van der Donk’s and Denton’s can be used to build up a much more accurate study if they are revitalized in the ways in which William Starna suggested. The greatest issue with those sources is the fact that they too were based on the earliest interactions between costal peoples (the earliest to become displaced) and Europeans, and they reflect the views of a foreign outsider looking in. Thus without any other forms of comparable data such as archeological finds those descriptions mean little in terms of descriptive accuracy. One example of a successful revitalization of those early primary sources aided by comparable data could
37 Starna, "Assessing American Indian-Dutch Studies," 17-18. 26
be seen in Daniel K. Richter’s Ordeal of the Longhouse. Richter’s work laid the foundation for a method that could weigh in all the weaknesses of early European descriptions of indigenous individuals while still utilizing those faulty papers to bear fruits. Unfortunately Richter’s Ordeal of the Longhouse was primarily centered on the Iroquois, or Haudenosaunee, which aside from detailing a research method to embark upon and describing peoples and factors that intersected with costal peoples, did little to describe the coastal people themselves. Studies of the coastal peoples in the area called Lenapehoking which became much of coastal New Netherland have yet to experience a study quite like the one put forth by Richter regarding people of the north. One of the major issues existent in those early descriptions of coastal peoples was that none of the authors specify which group of indigenous individuals they were writing about. Van der Donk did acknowledge that nations, tribes, and languages were as different in American than in Europe, but still gave a non-specified narrative. Van der Donk described the various tongues he encountered as four distinct categories: the Manhattan, Minquas, Savanoos, and Wappanoos. The Manhattans included, according to Van der Donk, the people of along the North (Hudson) River, those of Long Island, and of the “Neversink.” The Minquas included the Seneca, Maquaas, and other inland tribes. The Savanoos were of the south, and the Wappanoos were of the east.38 The only other time Van der Donk was specific between people was where he stated that beavers were usually taken from far inland by Minquas, Seneca, Maquas, and Hurons.39 Van der Donk spent his initial time in the colony up in the area near where Albany now exists following which he then spent time in Manhattan as well as the Yonkers area. Thus while he could be describing Delaware speaking peoples, others certainly would have made their way into his description. Daniel Denton was an Englishmen who in 1644 migrated with his father Reverend Richard Denton to Hempstead, Long Island from Connecticut via the Long Island Sound. At one point he was magistrate of Jamaica in Queens County, Long Island, which at the time also included the town of Hempstead where his father became the first minister. Eventually Daniel Denton was able to
38 Van der Donk, “Of the Different Nations and Languages.” 39 Adriaen Van der Donk, “A Relation of their Hunting and Fishing,” Description of the New Netherlands, Translated by Jeremiah Johnson, (New York, NY: Cosimo Classics, 1655). 27
purchase a tract of land on Staten Island from the Raritan of New Jersey. Due to the locations he existed within it is safe to say that the indigenous individuals Denton interacted with all belonged to the Munsee and Unami speaking Lenape peoples. Aside from the aforesaid mentioned, the people of Denton’s work most likely included were the Hackensack, Rockaway, Canarsie, Merokee, and Massapequa, among others. The individuals who interacted with Hudson’s Half Moon crew are also identifiable to some extent because Juet’s description included dates and locations upon their interactions. Those groups likely to have interacted with Hudson’s crew would have been the Navesink, Raritain, Hackensack, Rockaway, and Canarsie along the coast, as well as various peoples of the river all the way up into Mahican land. Putting Richter’s layout to use some interesting finds could be made to display connections which existed between the inland and coastal indigenous people of New Netherland during the time of early contact. One such element with similar traits in relation to long distance interaction which could be seen is that regarding religion. In Van der Donk’s description of indigenous religion he wrote that ideas of creation were believed to be passed down from their fathers. In their creation myth Van der Donk wrote that there was believed to be a beautiful women who came down upon a place where land appeared which then grew from where she sat.40 The authors of Unearthing Gotham gave a much more detailed description of the creation myth, and used anthropological data along with it. They referenced a Munsee Lenape man named Tantaque, who was about eighty years of age in 1679. Tantaque was originally from Long Island where he seemed to be a well-known figure. Later in his life he resided in New Jersey and by that point he frequented the Manhattan home of Dutch Labadist Christians Jasper Dankaerts (previously mentioned) and Peter Sluyter on Pearl Street. To those two men Tantaque relayed the story of creation as he had known it. During his description he drew the image on the ground of a turtle laying in water. He explained that “this was or is all water, and so at first was the world, or the earth, when the tortoise gradually raised its round back up high, and the water ran off it, and thus the earth became dry.” Tantaque continued that “the earth was now dry, and there grew a tree in
40 Adriaen Van der Donk, “Their Opinions of the Creation, &c.,” Description of the New Netherlands, Translated by Jeremiah Johnson, (New York, NY: Cosimo Classics, 1655). 28
the middle of the earth, and the root of this tree sent forth a sprout beside it and there grew upon it a man, who was the first male. This man was then alone, and would have remained alone, but the tree bent over until its top touched the earth and there shot therein another root, from which came forth another sprout, and grew upon it the women, and from these two are all men produced.”41 The story of creation according to Tantaque, originally of Long Island, and that which Van der Donk explained draw connections to diverse locations. At the very least, Tantaque frequented Long Island, Manhattan, and New Jersey (a triangular route still traversed by many individuals today). Archeological remains of an unknown date from a location within the Bronx’s NY Botanical Garden revealed a petroglyph of a tortoise.42 This ancient image connects the story of Tantaque to the peoples immediately north of his stomping grounds. This creation story of Lenapehoking shared many similarities to the inland Iroquois peoples even further north. In the Iroquoian myth, a being fell from the sky and landed upon a turtle’s back. This being was the Sky Women from the world above, the descendants of whom built the material world and everything in it. When the sky women fell from the above world, spirit animals brought her to safety upon a turtle’s back. The Sky Woman had a daughter after becoming pregnant by the turtle’s spirit. This daughter in turn birthed another daughter of whom birthed twins. These twins were known as Tharonhiawagon the good, also known as Sky-Grasper, and Tawiskaron the evil. While the latter killed his mother by bursting through her side during birth, he was able convince the Sky Woman it was the good twin that did this. The good twin was then thrown out of the house, and the mothers body and head became the sun and moon.43 In the Iroquoian myth there could be seen both the women who is beside God in other descriptions, relations to the devil via the bad twin, and the origination of the physical world through the back of a turtle. Myths of creation is just one aspect of indigenous life and spirituality but at the same time it reflected how individuals perceived the world upon which they existed. It is not surprising that indigenous individuals from
41 Cantwell and diZerega Wall, Unearthing Gotham, 35-36. 42 Ibid, 36. 43 Daniel K. Richter, The Ordeal of the Longhouse: The Peoples of the Iroquois League in the Era of European Colonization, (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1992), 8-10, hereafter cited as Richter, The Ordeal of the Longhouse. 29
throughout the New Netherland area had similar beliefs in terms of a creation myth. Although they lived in different geographic locations and spoke different languages they still lived within a proximity which allowed them to interact. Using the descriptions of Van der Donk, the research of Richter, and an archeological find presents only a small insight into how these elements share a connectedness, but it is solid method toward seeking out a more reliable understanding. There was a great diversity of indigenous individuals that existed within the area known as New Netherland, and they all shared a connected history which goes all the way back to their Paleo-Indian ancestors. The coastal peoples and those of the Hudson were among the very first in North America to become displaced by the arrival of Europeans. While many of those coastal peoples were early on to become displaced, they left lasting marks on the landscapes which European transplants came to occupy and develop. Native peoples there had already for centuries been clearing land for agriculture and human existence. Some roads too that were cleared and used by indigenous individuals later became some of the busiest roads to exist in the future United States. Two such of these roads were Jamaica Avenue and Manhattan’s Broadway. Tradition holds that Jamaica Avenue was once part of Native American trade routes which connected various indigenous groups through trade, and it likely was, but much of that history remains lost in the past. By the time Jamaica’s Daniel Denton was writing of indigenous people in 1670 those which would have made use of the road for indigenous affairs would have been long gone. According to Denton in his 1670 description “there is now but a few [Native Americans] upon the Island [Long Island].” At the time of his writing he explained that while there was once six Native American towns in his part of Long Island there came to remain only two small villages.44 The early displacement of indigenous individuals of the Jamaica area and the transplantation of English settlers within a Dutch colony ensured that the indigenous route of Jamaica Avenue would come close to being forgotten. What can be said however is that it had continuously existed as a used route of travel from indigenous times to the present.
44 Daniel Denton, A Brief Description of New York, Formerly Called New Netherland, With the Places Thereunto Adjoining. Likewise A Brief Relation of the Customs of the Indians There, (1670), 28-29, hereafter cited as Denton, A Brief Description of New York. 30
While the indigenous individuals of Manhattan similarly became displaced around the same time as those of western Long Island more could still be said about Broadway than that of Jamaica Avenue. Manhattan’s Broadway extends from the southern tip of Manhattan Island all the way to the mainland immediately north of it. The indigenous roots of Broadway have been much less forgotten due to the fact that as a capital area much more historical information pertaining to Manhattan had been recorded. The indigenous Broadway was known as the Wickquasgeck Trail which was named for a group of individuals which resided north of and within northern Manhattan.45 Citing the trail when writing in 1655 of the 1641 murder of wheelwright Claes Smits at his house along the trail, Captain David Pietersz de Vries noted that “on the Wickquasgek road” various indigenous individuals “passed daily.” In examining De Vries’ description of the Smits murder examples of the trails use among the Dutch and Wickquasgek could be seen. As De Vries explained Swits was murdered by a Wickquasgek man along the trail. When the Dutch of New Amsterdam went to inquire from the Wickquasgek whom committed the murder and why, the guilty individual explained that years earlier he, his uncle, and another went to trade at Fort Amsterdam when it was still being built. Upon arriving at the fort the uncle was murdered and his beaver pelts were taken. The Wickquasgek man was but a small boy at the time of his uncle’s murder, but he vowed to take revenge upon entering his manhood. Living upon the Native American trail frequented by individuals such as the Wickquasgek made Smits an easy target for one specific Wickquasgek to enact his revenge. 46 The establishment of Smits home along the trail displayed an example of European expansion up the island of Manhattan. The traveling of Wickquasgek, likely along the trail, to Fort Amsterdam along with the subsequent murder displayed an example of trade relations between the Dutch and native individuals. The use of the road to serve as a route between those interactions also displayed the importance served by the Wickquasgek Trail. The murder of Smits caused a violent war to occur which devastated Europeans of the Hudson, Long Island, and western Connecticut. While the war itself is often
45 Shorto, Island at the Center of the World, 60. 46 Jameson, Narratives of New Netherland, 213. 31
attributed to the acts committed under the direction of New Netherland director-general Willem Kieft, the initial revenge killing of Smits displayed an attribute which was an essential part of indigenous culture of the area. Again, while Richter’s Ordeal dealt principally with Iroquois it still can aid in helping understand coastal peoples. According to Richter, wars related to mourning were essential to Iroquois “fundamental laws of being.” These were laws of being which Richter explained were also shared with neighboring indigenous groups outside of the Haudenosaunee. These acts of mourning violence served the purpose of maintaining the continuity of society as well as serving as consolation for the deaths of kin. The customs related to wars of mourning had deep ties not just to societal practices but with spiritual ones as well. In the spiritual aspect ceremonies referred to as “Requickenings” were undertaken to ensure the spiritual potency and the social functions of the deceased would not diminish. In the physical acts of violence associated with wars of mourning a primary objective was not solely revenge but to maintain the collective power of a lineage, clan, or village.47 While the customs of the Wickquasgek and other coastal peoples were not identical to that of the Iroquois, the murder enacted upon Claes Smits would have certainly held different meanings to the Wickquasgek and European parties. The violence which occurred after the Smits murder was not the result of the Wickquaskgek revenge killing alone. Various interactions had been occurring between various European and indigenous parties which would eventually play out into a chaotic few years of violence for those within New Netherland. The murder of Smits was just one of many fatalities which came out of the misunderstandings and troubles arisen through indigenous displacement and European expansion. Perhaps a photograph of this changing era could be seen in the mid-century Jansson-Visscher map. While certain geographic errors exist within the map such as bodies of water and islands missing within and off the coast of southern Long Island, the map displayed that the Dutch had a well-established idea of their colony’s layout. The names of indigenous groups are dotted in detail throughout the entire map along with that of Dutch and English settlements. Groups such as the Wickquasgek, Tappan,
47 Richter, The Ordeal of the Longhouse, 30. 32
Hackensack, Massapequa, Canarsie, Rockaway, Pequot, Navesink, and many more are still listed as existing in their historic locations yet the European influence could be seen growing from centers such as Fort Amsterdam, Fort Orange, and Rensselaerswyck. The Dutch and English neighborhoods of Long Island are listed such as Brooklyn, Gravesend, Maspeth, Jamaica, Flushing, and Hempstead. In Connecticut the European settlements of Stamford and New Haven were also listed. The Jansson- Visscher map stood at a turning point in the lives of coastal peoples between the Delaware and Connecticut. More and more European settlements were spreading throughout the land and indigenous peoples increasingly were forced to interact with those groups. These increased interactions caused the lives of various individuals to change permanently. Following the mid-century the dynamics of the land which existed within Jansson-Visscher map would look completely different with a number of those indigenous groups listed replaced with the names of new European settlements and even new colonies. What occurred within these early and middle years of the seventeenth century to coastal peoples and those immediately inland was the beginning of a long series of events which would plague and displace indigenous peoples throughout the entire North America.48 49 This section provided a survey of the individuals who created the fertile and livable landscape that Europeans encountered when they arrived to this not so new world. So far the interactions between various Native American groups among themselves as well as with Europeans have been briefly described. The Iroquois, Lenape, Dutch, and English were all very different peoples in 1609, and upon that year a blending process began which would continue within those very lands continuously even into the present day. While the introduction of this process to the mid-Atlantic region came in 1609, it was also a continuation of that which was already ongoing in other parts of the Americas as well as within the patria of those incoming European powers, particularly the Dutch Republic. The Netherlands themselves over the century
48 Nicolaes Visscher, Novi Belgii Novaeque Angliae: nec non partis Virginiae tabula multis in locis emendata, [Amsterdam?, 1685] Map, https://www.loc.gov/item/97683561/. 49 David Y. Allen, “Dutch and English Mapping of Seventeenth-Century Long Island,” The Long Island Historical Journal 4, no. 1 (1991), 49-50, hereafter cited as Allen, “Dutch and English Mapping of Seventeenth-Century Long Island.” 33
prior had been undergoing its own cultural blending and modern development at a pace much greater than their neighbors within the British Isles. It was of those actions during the sixteenth century which allowed for the Dutch to begin their maritime endeavors, and in turn those developments allowed for the earliest signs of a modern American society, culture, and identity to become developed. The following section will detail how some of these actions began to progress, as well as create a cannon for the future synthesis of peoples and ideas on the southern tip of an island on the Hudson and the colony, colonies, future states, and country which would eventually surround it.
34
Chapter 3: A New Republic and World
It was no accident that the Dutch became one of the most powerful maritime powers of the seventeenth century; expansion was the means of their very survival. The Low Countries consist of a small area between France and Germany through which flows the Lower Rhine, and their histories intertwine with those surroundings as well as the greater portion of western, northern, and southern Europe. Human habitation in the area had a continuous stream of development since the time of archaic human species, and this development wasn’t cut off from the rest of the world since Pleistocene like the Paleo-Indian societies of America. Eventually the Low Countries came to be occupied by Celtic and Germanic peoples and would then come to exist within the expanding domain of Rome. Upon the fall of the western Roman Empire the borders and rulership of this area consistently shifted. During the Middle Ages much of the Low Countries were within the domains of the Merovingian dynasty and Carolingian Empire. They were then engulfed by the Holy Roman Empire which was eventually ruled by the House of Habsburg. The strength of this royal house reached new heights when the Habsburgs acquired lordship over the Spanish kingdoms which included Spanish America. Based on the intertwined history the Low Countries had with its neighbors it was no coincidence that Charles V was born in Flanders. The Low Countries were connected to a greater European world which was traversed by various peoples from far and wide. Prior to the maturation of a Dutch merchant-trading community, that role was filled by various peoples of the Italian peninsula throughout Europe. One of the most influential of these merchant seafaring Italic peoples were the Genoese. Genoa exists surrounded by mountainous hills on a coastal strip in the center of the western Mediterranean. It was only natural for them to become seafaring peoples, and this was similar to the Venetians who were surrounded by water. By the time the fourteenth century came around the Genoese, Venetians, and other Italian seafarers and merchants had their fingers in international affairs all throughout the Mediterranean, especially what was left of Byzantium. Those of the wealthy Italic merchant class were also at that time reviving a system of human enslavement for the production of
35
resources on various Mediterranean islands, a system which was unseen since the Roman era. This was a system which flourished under the Ancient Greek city-states and Roman Empire, but which died down as a form of mass market production once those civilizations fell. The revival of this system for the production of goods was at least in part was influenced by the decline and collapse of the Byzantine Empire. Once Constantinople fell in 1453 and the remnants of the empire of Byzantium scattered, the Italic merchants who held significant control over those ports lost their access to the vast riches of Asia. In response to Muslim control over the ports they formerly had unlimited access to, the Genoese, Venetians, and others established themselves in many other seafaring cities throughout Europe including Lisbon and Seville. They played a key role in the expansion of Portugal down the western shores of Africa as well the early enslavement of peoples from those areas by Europeans. While Seville was home to many seafaring individuals it was surrounded by Spanish kingdoms openly hostile to foreigners and those who sought out the sea. As Portugal was gradually expanding down western Africa in search of a new Asian connection, the northern Iberian Spanish kingdoms were still in a crusade to conquer the land of their southern neighbors. As all of this was occurring, one Genoese man bent on reconquering the holy land was attempting to gain a license from the Portuguese crown to embark on his own proposed sea route to Asia. When Christopher Columbus failed to gain a contract in 1492 he went on to seek a charter from the newly unified Spanish kingdoms of Castile and Aragon.50 51 Isabella and Ferdinand were the premier Catholic monarchs of Iberia who led the crusade to reconquer the last Islamic controlled area of the peninsula in Granada. In addition to cementing all of Iberia under Catholic rule in 1492, that same year Sephardic Jews and Muslims were forced to convert or be expelled. This was the Spanish world which Columbus had entered. The unified crowns of Castile and Aragon just gained crucial success in their expansion, and Columbus proposed to increase their wealth and
50 Herbert S. Klein and Ben Vinson III, “Origins of the American Slave System,” in African Slavery in Latin America and the Caribbean. 2nd ed. (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2007), hereafter cited as Klein and Vinson, African Slavery in Latin America and the Caribbean. 51 James Lockhart and Stewart B, “Iberian Ways,” in Early Latin America: A history of colonial Latin America and Brazil, (New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 1983). 36
power through his venture into Asia. During the reconquest many Spanish men managed to achieve new found nobilities and became known as hidalgos. With the Emirate of Granada defeated the amount of land crusaders could conquer for a noble title and fiefdom became finite. Columbus’ acquisition of access to the Americas for the Spanish crown gave these seekers of upward mobility infinite possibilities. In an increasingly shrinking peninsula access to overseas lands would allow those future hidalgos to increase the wealth and status of both themselves and their families. Some of the earliest who ventured to the Spanish Americas were these new nobles and those yet to achieve their hidalgo status. When the sedentary societies of Mesoamerica and the Andes along with their resources were acquiesced and claimed by Spain, they quickly became the central administrative areas of Spanish America. As time continued to progress the two American viceroyalties of Spain grew exponentially while the outlying areas of influence began to fall into decay. The Spanish came to America directly out of their reconquest and that journey was made possible by centuries of international communications and connections. Italian merchants such as Columbus had already for centuries been participating in international endeavors. While the Iberian peninsula was very much still in the medieval world, technological advancements coming out of the Italian peninsula, Islamic world, and other parts of Europe were quickly transforming their world as a whole. It was through a culmination of new advances in seafaring technology which allowed the Portuguese and Spanish along with Italian seafarers to make voyages all along the Atlantic coast of Africa as well as across the ocean into America. With the newly established Iberian connections to Asia, Africa, and America the world was on a rapid and permanent change from roughly 1500 onward. With the Low Countries becoming both Habsburg and Spanish possessions their cities as were also able to benefit and profit from newfound Iberian wealth. Cities such as Antwerp, Amsterdam, Brussels, The Hague, et cetera provided luxuries such as clothing, navel stores, and manufacturing which the Spanish couldn’t produce on their own. These were luxuries and services that Spain paid for with their newly acquired gold and silver from their American colonies.52
52 Edwin G. Burrows and Mike Wallace, Gotham: A History of New York City to 1898, (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 1999), 15, hereafter cited as Burrows and Wallace, Gotham. 37
Not only did activities such as these establish the Low Countries as a center of commerce based on international trade, but it gave them an increasing amount of wealth also. Similarly to the Genoese and Venetians the Low Countries were particularly affected by the water which surrounded them. This connection to the sea allowed their nautical skills to naturally develop with the financial backing of an empire. As a center of commerce and maritime affairs cities such as Amsterdam became a welcoming place to merchants from all throughout Europe. According to Edwin Burrows and Mike Wallace, Amsterdam was one of Europe’s most lively and cosmopolitan cities of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The Low Countries were on the way to having the most up to date credit and banking facilities, and nearly all opportunities were welcome. Amsterdam was increasingly becoming a place where regardless of an any individual’s backgrounds, beliefs, and points of origin they faced little trouble in gaining “credit and exchange.” When Protestantism began to sweep across Europe, an English observer claimed the Dutch possessed the very “mint of schism.”53 With the Inquisition in Iberia then in full swing, Amsterdam also became a place where merchants, traders, and businessmen of Sephardic Jewish origin engaged in joint efforts to participate in the early modern Atlantic trade with much less of a threat of lethal persecution and forced conversion. Filipa Ribeiro Da Silva argued that individuals such these worked to reduce the risks posed by the rivalries and conflicts of competing European states. While Iberian and other European states engaged in their conflicts, private individuals of those states operated throughout the Low Countries. These people became connected through formal and informal business networks existing across a variety of interconnecting European states. Da Silva wrote that primary scholarship on early modern European empires rarely acknowledged the role played by these private merchants in the building of empires. Much more research could be done and is being done to analyze the role of Sephardic merchants played in the American world. While they came to represent only a small percentage of the population in New Netherland, those Sephardic merchants had vast international connections. Aside from Dutchmen, Sephardic Jews, Iberians, and Italians, other merchants including Germans,
53 Burrows and Wallace, Gotham, 16. 38
Flemish, Frenchmen, and Englishmen all came to operate in places such as Amsterdam. It was the preference of profit over creed which allowed the Low Countries to become a place of international commerce and tolerance.54 As the “mint of schism” the Low Countries increasingly became a hotbed of Protestant refuge and dissent. The Low Countries already held strong connections to Germany, where the Reformation began in print, which quickly spread to their neighbors. Like Geneva, Protestants form across western Europe came to the Netherlands for refuge as many Dutch themselves were converting en masse to Calvinism. To be a diverse location with various localities of Protestant populations under Catholic rule distinguished many in the Low Countries as heretics and heathens. Being the time of a Spanish Inquisition a key location within their domain could hardly be afforded to become a hotbed of heresy. Catholics constituted perhaps a majority throughout the Low Countries but their tolerance toward others for the sake of business at the very least welcomed them to the retaliation of Catholic Spain and the Habsburgs. The northward spread of the Spanish Inquisition quickly led to the radicalization of Dutch peoples who witnessed violence toward themselves and their neighbors. These events caused a sense of Dutch nationalism to strengthen and a new war of independence to develop. The long struggle for a Dutch Republic came to be known as the Eighty Years’ War, or the Dutch War of Independence. Seven of the northern Dutch provinces succeeded in proclaiming their independence early on to form the United Provinces of the Netherlands, also known as the Republic of the Seven United Netherlands. As an independent republic the United Provinces then took on both an offensive and defensive role in maintaining that independence. The mercantile commerce within their cities hardly ceased and many of these merchant traders used the establishment of an independent republic to their advantage. It was once estimated by Sir Walter Raleigh that the Dutch had more ships than all nations combined and these ships were quickly put to use. Dutch squadrons began plundering Spanish and Portuguese ports and establishing trading and manufacturing
54 Filipa R. Da Silva, "Forms of Cooperation between Dutch-Flemish, Sephardim and Portuguese Private Merchants for the Western African Trade within the Formal Dutch and Iberian Atlantic Empires, 1590– 1674," Portuguese Studies 28, no. 2 (2012), 159, 161. 39
“factories” throughout America and Asia. The Dutch were already one of the most important trading partners in Brazil due to their previous Iberian connections, and they were beginning to become heavily involved in the Brazilian sugar industry. With the outbreak of war the Dutch then sought out to gain direct control over that production.55 In this sense the Dutch were also becoming involved in the trading of enslaved Africans in Brazil. Katia Mattoso estimated that up to three hundred enslaved Africans were being brought to Brazil on a single vessel between the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.56 Dutch merchants were crucial to the new plantation movement in Brazil who became partners with Portuguese planters throughout the sixteenth century.57 While the Dutch were beginning to plunder the Portuguese possessions their merchants had already been engaged in international commerce with those possessions before, during, and after such plundering occurred. By the 1580s, the Brazilian province of Pernambuco was the largest sugar producer in the western hemisphere, and it had direct connections to the Antwerp market. Dutch shipping played a vital role in linking Brazil to other northern European markets. This was at the very least in part of the fact that the Dutch had a booming commercial network which allowed them to engage in close contact with Portuguese merchants who dominated the sugar production by 1600.58 An individual who represented one type of a variety of individuals who sought refuge in the United Provinces and played an influential role in American expansion was Willem Usselinx. He was born in Antwerp around 1567 and as a youth became a traders apprentice which took him to prominent ports throughout Europe. By twenty-four he had watched treasure fleets from America come into the port at Seville, watched the unloading of Brazilian sugar fleets in Oporto, engaged with merchants in the Azores, and had become fluent in Italian, Spanish, and Portuguese (the prominent languages of business at the time). Like many in his native Low Countries Usselinx became swept up in Calvinism. In addition he had also watched Spain attempt to crush the Protestant
55 Klein and Vinson, African Slavery in Latin America and the Caribbean, 49-50. 56 Katia M. De Queiros Mattoso, To Be a Slave in Brazil: 1550-1888, (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1986), 34. 57 Klein and Vinson, African Slavery in Latin America and the Caribbean, 47. 58 Ibid, 44-45. 40
rebellion which occurred there. Eventually he fled to Amsterdam, like many who became Protestant refugees in the later sixteenth century and entered the circles of his fellow merchants, traders, seafarers, and explorers. Around the year 1600, Usselinx began to develop a plan which he thought would make the reformed Dutch Republic superior over the Iberian Catholics in America. This was a plan he would devote the next two decades developing which was intended to create American colonies that would exist as a part of a larger Dutch empire. In his grand scheme Usselinx wanted to convert American natives to Dutch Calvinism to then incorporate them into the Empire. These natives would be educated in Protestant ways based on goodwill and Christian virtue, in contrast to how the Catholics enforced their form of Christianity in America, which was through the sword (according to the Dutch “black legend”). To sustain the colonies Usselinx dreamed of the implantation of burgher-run farms throughout the colonies to be worked by Native American laborers whom those burghers would oversee. In order for these efforts to be undergone Usselinx early on argued for the creation of a single unified trading company in the West Indies.59 At the time Usselinx began to formulate his ideas, a company of competing merchants in the United Provinces had been embarking on privateering and trading missions for decades. The Caribbean, West Africa, and Asia were becoming choice targets for these merchants around 1600 because Spain had become primarily focused on its two major viceroyalties, and Portugal was increasingly devoting much more of its interest into Brazil, which throughout the previous century was hardly the focus of those interests. Partially in response to the variety of competition undergoing among their own merchants and the formation of a British East India Company, the threatened interest of the Dutch government caused them to sponsor the creation of a single Dutch East India Company. This company, which was abbreviated with the logo VOC, became a powerhouse of Dutch interests capitalizing on the riches of Asia for the benefit of the Republic and the colonies which were then beginning to take shape. This did not happen as smoothly or quickly in the case of the Americas where Spain and Portugal were still heavily involved. Although the Dutch were indeed involved in privateering
59 Rink, Holland on the Hudson, 52-53. 41
expeditions and the merchants of the Republic’s cities were involved in American endeavors, the Netherlands was still in its long war of independence. The hindrance of Dutch American expansion due to the war could be seen in one of Usselinx’s earliest attempts to form a West India Company. In 1606 his plan for a company to compete with Spain in the Americas was debated among the States of Holland. Unfortunately for him it was denied as prominent members of the government were working on a plan to embark upon a truce deal with the Spanish.60 This was a truce to be realized and enacted in 1609 and became known as the Twelve Years’ Truce. With a temporary end to hostilities between Spain and the Netherlands, it is no coincidence that Henry Hudson was commissioned by the VOC to find a new route to Asia. Previously Hudson had embarked on two voyages in search of a northeast passage to Asia for his native England. Both voyages had no success but news of the voyages captured the ears of a variety of individuals. When Hudson sought out a contract for a third voyage he was rejected by the Muscovy Company. Not long after this Hudson became acquainted with Emmanuel van Meteren who connected him with the VOC who were eager seek out a new passage to Asia.61 Following extended talks Hudson traveled to the Netherlands where the VOC eventually agreed to commission his third voyage to find the northeast passage. The ship he was to captain for this journey was the VOC vessel named Da Halve Maen or The Half Moon. Hudson and this vessel sailed out of Texel on the fourth of April in 1609 with a crew of fifteen to twenty men of both Dutch and English origin. While sailing through the icy northern waters of the European arctic, Hudson decided to abandon his mission and changed course to the Americas instead. While on this route the Hudson and crew interacted with natives along the coast of modern Maine, and the captain contemplated a rendezvous with his fellow Englishman John Smith who was currently in Virginia. Being that he was heading a Dutch ship at the time and for whatever other reason, Hudson then decided to sail back northward without stopping at the newly founded British colony. Hudson then reached the great bay of the future Hudson River and claimed the area for the Dutch, for whom he was captaining the voyage. After returning to the mouth of the river he just
60 Rink, Holland on the Hudson, 52. 61 Shorto, Island at the Center of the World, 24. 42
explored, Hudson then sailed back to Europe on the fourth of October. Hudson landed the Dutch ship he was commanding in Dartmouth on the seventh of November where he was then briefly imprisoned by the authorities of his home country. This is a brief description of how the English national Henry Hudson came to gain the area of New Netherland for the Dutch. While New Netherland thus became an area of Dutch interest, the idea of something related to Usselinx’s West India Company was still distant. Once news of Hudson’s voyage reached back to the Netherlands merchants there were eager to seek potential gains which could be acquired in the newly claimed land of the Dutch. It was almost as soon as news arrived that individuals had already begun to lay out plans for other voyages of their own. It is likely that Hendrick Christiaensen with Adriaen Block as supercargo sailed the Fortuyn for Lambert van Tweenhuysen into area of the Hudson River on his 1611 return from the West Indies. Both Christiaensen and Van Tweenhuysen would continue to play significant roles in the most immediate years following this initial “discovery.” In addition to the latter who was a member of a small group of Lutheran merchants in Amsterdam, another Lutheran merchant named Arnout Vogels (who was a friend of Van Tweenhuysen) was organizing his own expedition to “Terra Nova.” In 1611, Vogels organized a partnership with brothers Leonard and Francoys Pelgrom to charter the ship St. Pieter for the journey, the ship of which was twice the size of Hudson’s Half Moon. The St. Pieter was to be captained by Cornelis Rijser. While Vogels was initially involved in a scheme to exploit fur in collaboration with a French company, he eventually sold out to his French partners before their agreement had been complete. Following the initial 1611 voyage of the St. Pieter, Vogels then financed a 1612 voyage of the Fortuyn captained by Block to New Netherland upon the return of which the Fortuyn was then outfitted for yet another voyage.62 It was during the 1612 voyage of the Fortuyn that competition between different merchants of the Netherlands began to occur within the waters of the Hudson. About seven weeks after Block arrived and had begun trading with local natives there, the competing ship Jonge Tobias captained by Thijs Mossel with Jan Jorissen as
62 Rink, Holland on the Hudson, 32-34. 43
supercargo arrived within sight of Block on the Hudson. Almost immediately the crew of the Jonge Tobias attempted to spoil the trading endeavors of Block, which he would later attest to in court. Mossel began to offer natives twice as much for goods as Block had previously offered during his previous two weeks on the Hudson. This confrontation would continue into the following year when each of these competing ships were engaged in yet another trading expedition and confrontation. Aside from attempts by Mossel to “spoil” Block’s trade, one very important individual who was working for Mossel disembarked the Jonge Tobias on the Hudson permanently. This was Juan Rodriguez, who was a “mulatto” from the Spanish island of Hispaniola. This island at the time was referred to by the Dutch as “St. Domingo” for the capital of Santo Domingo of which the island was often referred. In court documents it was said that as “Mossel sailed away from the river with his ship” Rodriguez then “stayed ashore at the same place.” It was further claimed that Rodriguez was given some eighty hatchets, knives, a musket, and a sabre. According to Mossel and Jorissen, Rodriguez had “run away and gone ashore against their intent and will and that they had given him the said goods in payment of his wages and therefore had nothing more to do with him.” They further argued that because Rodriguez did not want to go with them to the Netherlands, they “ought to have shot him.” At this time “the Spaniard,” the “mulatto,” and “the black rascal” (all of which referred to Rodriguez by the Dutchmen) had become the first non- indigenous individual recorded to have thus lived in the area around the Hudson River. Block along with members of his crew appeared in court at Amsterdam against Mossel, Jorissen, and a members of their crew on August 20th, 1613.63 64 Word of the successes during the 1612 expeditions spread despite the disputes of the two competing parties and a number of merchants decided to organize trading cartels. A prominent cartel included Van Tweenhuysen, Vogels, the Pelgrom brothers, and other exile merchants from the southern provinces of the Low Countries. One merchant in competition with this cartel was Simon Willemsz Noorms, who when
63 Rink, Holland on the Hudson, 34. 64 Anthony Stevens-Acevedo, Tom Weterings, and Leonor Alvarez Francés, “Juan Rodriguez and the Beginnings of New York City,” Dominican Studies Research Monograph Series, (New York, NY: CUNY Academic Works, 2013), hereafter cited as Stevens-Acevedo, Weterings, and Francés, “Juan Rodriguez and the Beginnings of New York City.” 44
arguing with Adriaen Block (an employee of Van Tweenhuysen) stated that only a patent from the States General could grant exclusive trade privileges, of which one did not yet exist. Block tried to set forth the idea that he had indeed held a patent to trade in New Netherland on behalf of the Van Tweenhuysen cartel, but the competition refused to accept his bluff. This included the merchant Hans Claesz and his associates who were behind the initial voyage of the Jonge Tobias. When word reached this party that Block was preparing for his 1613 voyage, they too began to hasten plans of their own. Prince Maurice attempted to get the two parties to enter into an agreement which could not be achieved and the parties then sent out their 1613 trading expeditions in competition. Of the Van Tweenhuysen cartel were the ships Tyger captained by Block, and the Fortuyn with Christiaensen as captain. Claesz and his partners set forth with just one ship which was again captained by Thijs Mossel, who this time sailed the Nachtegael. Christiaensen’s party were the first to arrive in the Hudson, and upon that arrival they had encountered a familiar face from the year before.65 During the Dutch absence Juan Rodriguez had become acquainted and familiar with local natives of the area of whom welcomed him. Upon seeing the arrival of Christiaensen to the great bay of the Hudson, Rodriguez then brought himself aboard the Fortuyn and offered his services. When Mossel arrived back on the scene and saw his former employee working with the competition he became furious. The parties of Christiaensen and Mossel then went into a trade war with the natives with each continuously outbidding the other for goods. While this was occurring Block, who was head of the Tweenhuysen operations, finally made it to the river himself. He attempted to reach a trading agreement with Mossel through negotiations which continued into the winter before quickly falling apart. It was at this time that Block’s ship the Tyger burst into flames. Mossel tried to bank on this tragedy by offering Block a deal which favored his own interests, but this only resulted in Block forbidding any of his own crew from stepping foot on Mossel’s ship. Block and a number of his crew then took to land in an attempt to have another ship constructed. As this was occurring, some of Blocks crew then took it upon themselves to commandeer the Nachtegael and force Mossel ashore.
65 Rink, Holland on the Hudson, 34-41. 45
They then took the ship to the West Indies for a few months and returned to New Netherland, but upon their arrival and not finding any Europeans the crew then sailed onward to Ireland. It was at that location where the Nachtegael was abandoned and the crew disappeared from the records except for Claes Woutersen. Claes later testified that Block had no involvement in the actions of this branch of his crew, and it is only through him that the fate of the Nachtegael is known.66 In the meantime while the Nachtegael was away, Block was still in the process of building his next ship the Onrust and Mossel himself was stranded also. The Onrust was a significantly smaller ship than its predecessor and the Fortyun had little room for additional crewmen. It is estimated that the Tyger weighed about one hundred thirty tons burden, was at a length of about up to eighty-two feet, bore six cannons, and could hold a crew of eighteen to twenty. The Onrust weighed only about sixteen tons of burden, and was only about just over forty-four feet in length and eleven feet and a half in width.67 Luckily for the stranded parties, two more Dutch ships pulled into the Hudson. The Vos was sponsored by Simon Noorms and whaling merchant Jonas Witssen, and the second was another ship named Fortuyn and was sponsored by a company of merchants from Hoorn. These newcomers demanded an equal share in furs which Block was hardly in any position to argue against at that point in time. The Vos and both ships named Fortuyn arrived back in the Netherlands in the spring of 1614. Despite its size, the Onrust was certainly seaworthy because Block would use it to continue exploring uncharted territories and waters unable to navigate in larger vessels. His voyage aboard the Onrust was significant in many ways, but his decision to explore the waters further had an immediate impact.68 Although it is more than likely that other sailors had encountered the East River, Hell Gate, and the Long Island Sound prior to Block’s voyage of the Onrust, it was of this journey that they were first documented among many other landmarks. Similarly, it was from this voyage that Manhattan was first documented to be an island of its own.
66 Rink, Holland on the Hudson, 41-44. 67 Ralph S. Solecki, "The "Tiger," an Early Dutch 17th Century Ship, and an Abortive Salvage Attempt," Journal of Field Archaeology 1, no. 1/2 (1974), 109, hereafter cited as Solecki, “The Tiger.” 68 Rink, Holland on the Hudson, 44-45. 46
When Block returned to the Netherlands in 1614, his travels were mapped on a manuscript chart referred to as the “Adriaen Block Chart.” At the time of its production the cart became one of the most detailed maps of New Netherland. Regarding Long Island the map depicted it with great accuracy, and it could be comparable to those produced over a century later. One of the reasons Block’s chart was one of the best of its days is due to the fact that unlike other maps depicting the colony, his was based on actually being there. The chart made by Block became a basis for many others which followed, including the vastly important Nova Belgica et Anglia Nova of 1635 made by Willem Janszoon Blaeu. It should also be noted that Block’s chart was the first document to refer to the area surrounding the Hudson River as New Netherland.69 The Onrust was also significant because it was the first European style ship to be built in the vicinity of the Hudson River. Even though the Tyger sunk, it became more significant for that very reason. Not only did it force Block to build the first European style ship on the Hudson, but it also made the Tyger the first to sink there. For three hundred years the 1613-1614 sinking of the Tyger was the end of its story. In 1916 the construction on an Interborough Rapid Transit, or I.R.T., subway tunnel under the intersections of Greenwich and Dey Streets (site of a current MTA 1 train station and World Trade Center Memorial) changed that. Because Greenwich Street existed as the original shore line of southern Manhattan before being filled for an extension it was possible for a ship that sunk in that location to be buried in the process. During an I.R.T. dig the charred keelson and some rib frames of a ship were discovered along with a Dutch broad-head axe, clay pipes, a small cannon ball, trade beads, and shards of white and blue pottery were uncovered. James A. Kelly was an amateur historian and foreman on the construction site, so when news of the finding reached him he swiftly arranged for the items to be preserved. Kelly knew a bit of the New Netherland story, and suspected that this find would have been remains from Block’s Tyger. After being housed in an aquarium near Battery Park the ship remains were then given to the Museum of the City of New York. In 1967 during the construction of the World Trade Center’s Twin Towers, an attempt was made to find more remains of the
69 Allen, “Dutch and English Mapping of Seventeenth-Century Long Island,” 45-48. 47
ship with no results. Archeologist Ralph Solecki who was involved in the World Trade Center dig and believed the found remains were indeed from the Tyger published the results of his findings in 1974.70 In 2005 another study was done on the remains of the 1916 finds by Gerald A. de Weerdt, who concluded with different results. According to Weedt, the remains were not from the Tyger at all, but most likely an English river vessel built sometime within the eighteenth century. Whether or not the remains from the 1916 find belonged to the Tyger remains a mystery, but until further research can be done Weerdt’s conclusion may not be absolute. The results of the 1613-1614 voyages of competing merchants in New Netherland proved that something had to be changed. In 1615, it was decided necessary that a “united company of merchants” should be formed to combat competition between various groups of merchants. Once organized this company came to be known as the New Netherland Company, and its contract was to initially last for three years. During that time agents of that company surveyed and mapped areas throughout the region such as the Delaware coast, the Jersey Shore, the Long Island Sound, and even the coast line as far south as the Carolinas. Fort Nassau (the future Fort Orange) had also been established as an outpost for the fur trade on the Hudson. While the New Netherland Company charter expired in 1618, annual voyages continued to be sponsored and organized until 1621. It was also at this time that the twelve year truce between the Netherlands and Spain was coming to a close, and preparations had to be made for the restarting of warfare which was likely to occur. It is at this time where Willem Usselinx of Antwerp came back into the picture, although he did never really cease in fighting for his West India Company over the previous years. All his years of hard work were about to be realized when in 1621 such a company was organized. While Usselinx was one of the primary factors who contributed to the idea of such a company, many others indeed played a role in the 1621 realization and foundation of that company. These other factors also played significant roles in what was to be included in the WIC charter, and it ultimately came as a great disappointment to Usselinx many of whose ideas for the WIC were ignored.71
70 Solecki, “The Tiger.” 71 Rink, Holland on the Hudson, 46-50, 48
One key element which hindered the formation of a West India Company at the initial time of Usselinx’s attempts had to do with the peace negotiations occurring with Spain. The Netherlands had its share of war “hawks” as Oliver Rink called them, and Usselinx was certainly one of these. The primary objective of a WIC as he saw it was to compete with Spain for control of the Americas. Others such as Dutch statesman Johan van Oldenbarnevelt saw the foundation of a West India Company to compete with Spain as a hindrance at attempts of peace. After all, Spain’s recognition of the United Provinces as an official republic relied of the success of the Twelve Years’ Truce to be brokered. With the a temporary peace brokered, it would hardly be practical to organize a monolithic company to compete with Spain for control of the wealth of foreign lands. During this truce however, significant conflicts within branches of the Calvinist Dutch Reformed Church caused Van Oldenbarnevelt not only to be stripped of his power but executed as well. The 1618-1619 Synod of Dort settled the differences between the Calvinist branches of Arminians and Gomarists, and also defined the new orthodoxy which was to be accepted in the Dutch Reformed Church. Those who refused to accept the terms of the synod were banned from both academic and clerical positions. With the peace of the Twelve Years’ Truce coming to an end little voices would come to stand in the way of the formation of the West India Company that Usselinx had been trying so hard to get achieved. Unfortunately for him, those who set forth in the foundation of such a company held none of the ambitious dreams Usselinx held by himself in the potential that America could hold in the creation of a powerful Dutch Empire.72 Usselinx envisioned a new Dutch Empire based on Calvinist virtue which would come about through the West India Company and be used to topple Spanish superiorities in the Americas. What the WIC came out to be was solely a business enterprise with the primary aim to enrich the Netherlands and the various merchants who contributed to its developments. The colonization plans which existed as a centerpiece of Usselinx’s goals were scrapped, especially important is that nothing was mentioned in the new charter about the conversion of Native Americans. Without the conversion of indigenous individuals and the incorporation of them as citizens of a
72 Rink, Holland on the Hudson, 53-60. 49
Dutch Empire any solidification and organization of such an empire would be futile. While Usselix was offered a position in the company he worked so hard to create he was so offended that he ultimately refused the position offered to him. Not only did he refuse that position, but he left the Netherlands altogether and became a significant individual involved in the Swedish West India Company, which would then come to briefly compete against the Dutch in New Netherland. Usselinx died in 1647 at eighty years old and his dreams of an empire to outshine the Spanish in the Americas would hardly be realized by the Dutch or within that century. The Dutch WIC was hardly hindered by Usselinx’s decision to decline the position he was offered, and continued with its plans swiftly after formation in 1621. The Company started out with twenty ships initially and a promise by the States General to achieve twenty more.73 New Netherland was hardly the initial sphere of interest for the newly established West India Company. With a renewal of war with Spain came the renewal of interests in the Caribbean and South America as well. Despite all the efforts of Usselinx, the foundation of the West India Company came out of a necessity to compete during a renewed time of war. This wasn’t just a renewed time of war between the Dutch Republic and Spain however. It was during this same time that The Thirty Years’ War was beginning to occur, and in regards to the Dutch this was also one which took place within their larger war of independence i.e. the Eighty Years’ War. Some historians had suggested in a necessity to consider the Thirty Years’ War a continuation of the Dutch War of Independence due to the fact that within it there existed a showdown between Spain and the Netherlands for control of the Lower Rhine region. The divisions between Catholics and Protestants played an important role in the division of factions throughout the warring parties, and before the Dutch even officially entered the Thirty Years’ War they were already financially assisting allied parties. This could be shown by the States General voting in 1619 to pay the Protestant faction a 50,000 florin subsidy which would provide the funds for about 1,000 cavalry and 4,000 soldiers. The Thirty Years’ War was one often looked at in the context of its European theatres which had caused historians to overlook some crucial elements. The failure to connect the themes of commercial
73 Rink, Holland on the Hudson, 60-62. 50
competition and military needs of both the Dutch and Iberians is one problem John K. Thornton wrote still exists in historiography of the Thirty Years’ War. Thornton argued that the reason for this failure is that some historians continue to overlook the Atlantic dimension that existed well throughout that war, which made it one not solely centered on Europe.74 In spite of these continually existing failures a number of historians had begun to study how the greater Atlantic world played important roles in that European war, with John Thornton being one of those individuals. The revenue from trade based in the Americas and Indies were vital for the prosecution of wars such as that of Dutch Independence and Thirty Years’ War. To use just one example already mentioned would be the war effort subsidies voted to be paid by the States General. The money had to come from somewhere, and both the Dutch and Iberians were already making significant gains throughout the seas. Thus the foundation of the West India Company would have been affected by all these factors in a connectedness with one another. One core goal of the West India Company which developed early within its foundation included the idea of a Groot Dessyn (Great Design) which involved a Dutch control over Atlantic resources. The Groot Dessyn involved Dutch seizures of Iberian Atlantic assets to break the hold those Catholic kingdoms had on major Atlantic areas. While some of these desires seemed in line with Usselinx’s own goals, the commercial aspects of it rendered it vastly different. In order to finance the European war at home resources from America and other locations had to be utilized and controlled. Because those resources were so vital for the funding of what went into the European war effort the Thirty Years’ War could hardly be fully discussed without the acknowledgment of an Atlantic element. This Atlantic element is one that involved a variety of European powers but it is also one which brought other non-Europeans into the Thirty Years’ War as well. That latter statement is one which can be exemplified by the participation of the Kingdom of Kongo in the Thirty Years’ War among others. This brings up a second problem John K. Thornton wrote still existed in the historiography of that war. He wrote
74 John K. Thornton, "The Kingdom of Kongo and the Thirty Years' War," Journal of World History 27, no. 2 (2016), 189-213, hereafter cited as Thornton, “The Kingdom of Kongo and the Thirty Years’ War.” 51
that a number of historians have failed to connect African people to the struggle between the Iberians and Dutch for control in South American and West African trading ports. Thornton insisted that the Kingdom of Kongo played a core role in the Dutch decision to act on their advances, and it were the actions of the Kongo which influenced the Groot Dessyn to develop within Dutch minds.75 Thornton’s study interjected the Kingdom of Kongo into the Thirty Years’ War, the Dutch War of Independence, the Groot Dessyn, and decisions of the West India Company. Some valuable evidence for this involvement came through letters of correspondence between premier officials within both the United Provinces and Kingdom of Kongo. One such letter used to make the case was that written by King Pedro II of Kongo and Count Manuel of Soyo to the Dutch States General in 1622. The arrival of these letters came at a crucial time in the development of West India Company goals as well as a host of other external factors affecting Dutch activities and decision making. Thornton argued that these letters gave the Netherlands confidence to engage in attacks on Iberian outposts throughout multiple continents without devoting all of its manpower to such an endeavor. Gaining outposts in South America and West Africa would have given a significant amount of resources to assist Protestant forces in Europe as well as their own goals of independence and power.76 The Netherlands initially became involved with the Kingdom of Kongo when Dutch ships first entered region in 1593 to establish trade. In 1606 Dutch merchants began commercial visits to the Kongo, which led Count Miguel of Soyo to express support for Dutch trade in his land via a letter to the States General. Two years later the Dutch merchant Wemmen van Berchem sailed to the Kongo to make an alliance with Count Antonio Miguel and the King Alvaro II. Upon his arrival to the area Van Berchem was attacked by the Portuguese who claimed they had a monopoly on trade in the Kongo. In a show of support to the Dutch, Count Miguel stopped attempts by Portugal to construct a fort at the mouth of the Congo river intended to hinder future Dutch advances. Then in 1612 the people of Soyo further aided Dutch shipmen in avoiding another Portuguese attack on their ship. King of the Kongo Alvaro II then ordered the
75 Thornton, “The Kingdom of Kongo and the Thirty Years' War,” 189-191. 76 Ibid, 192. 52
count to assist Dutch trader Pieter Brandt in protecting the coast of the Kongo from the Portuguese. Count Miguel was also ordered by the King to propose further alliances with not just the Dutch but Denmark as well. Resulting from this new alliance the Dutch were able to establish a factory in Soyo by 1613 and within a few years there came to be four.77 In 1622 Duke Pedro Alfonso of Mbamba became Pedro II, King of the Kongo. Following this issues with Portugal continued to escalate due to a Portuguese attempting to instill a more loyal king. King Pedro II then chose to make greater alliances with the Dutch due to Portuguese attempts to depose him. Both Pedro II and Count Manuel sent letters to the States General which included plans to expel the Portuguese from the Angola region and secure the coast. The plans included a request for the Dutch to provide four to five warships as well as up to six hundred soldiers which would be paid for in ivory, silver, or gold. If these provisions were to prove successful Kongo officials offered the Netherlands access to the port city of Luanda, which already provided over twenty-four thousand Africans to the Americas annually. The letters of Count Manuel and King Pedro II were officially discussed in a States General meeting on the twenty-seventh of October in 1623. Thornton argued that it was after this meeting under which the Groot Dessyn began to take root. The Dutch agreed to this alliance and sent twenty-six warships with 3,300 soldiers to Brazil in late December of 1623. The Brazilian city of Salvador fell to the Dutch just days after their May arrival. In August 1629, a fleet of three warships, two armed yachts, and over four-hundred twenty men were dispatched from Brazil to capture the West African Port city of Luanda. Unfortunately before the Dutch could arrive King Pedro II died and internal issues within the Kongo arose, which hindered significant aid from reaching the Dutch. When the Dutch fleet under the command of Pieter Heyn arrived near Luanda in late October they suffered heavy losses at the hands of the Portuguese. In early November Heyn called off the assault and headed to Soyo to recuperate. Despite being well received at Soyo, Heyn was refused aid by Count Manuel and returned to Brazil defeated.78
77 Thornton, “The Kingdom of Kongo and the Thirty Years' War,” 197. 78 Ibid, 197-204. 53
The initial attempts at a Groot Dessyn appeared to be a failure. The Dutch were not successful in capturing the port city of Luanda and they failed to maintain control of the Brazilian region Bahia in 1625. With these failures still fresh the West India Company then decided to switch from an aggressive war to privateering missions throughout Brazil, West Africa, and the Caribbean. It was through these privateering expeditions where their luck began to change with Pieter Heyn successfully raiding a Spanish silver fleet near the Kongo in 1628. The fleet of silver put much funds in the West India Company coffers which would again allow them to engage in attempts of conquest. In March of 1630 the Dutch were victorious in capturing the capital of Pernambuco in Brazil, which they were able to maintain for a significant period. With their new power in Brazil WIC officials realized that the demand for sugar could not be met without the importation of enslaved labor, and it was at this point that the Dutch officially entered the commercial slave trade. As all of this was going on Count Manuel of Soyo was replaced by a Count Paulo, who in invited the Dutch to reestablish their factory in the area as well as renew a commercial alliance between the two. This new Dutch factory in the vicinity of Soyo, which opened in 1637, was to be used for the purchase of enslaved individuals to be sent to Brazil. When Garcia II became king of the Kongo in 1641, Angola’s governor sent word to the Portuguese that a new pro-Dutch faction had gained control of the Kongo. To solidify this alliance King Garcia II sent ambassadors to Brazil and the Netherlands requesting aid in further removing the Portuguese from their land.79 With an assurance of aid from the Kongo, the West India Company decided to invade Angola in May 1641. Cornelis Jol was sent to Luanda in command of what Thornton called “the largest expedition in the history of the West India Company,” and succeeded in taking the city that August. The Congolese and Dutch were then aided by rulers of neighboring areas in their efforts to rid the region from Portuguese influence. A new treaty of alliance was signed between the Kingdom of Kongo and Netherlands on the twenty-eighth of March in 1642. This was something both groups gained from being that the Dutch were permitted to build new factories and the Kongo would remain able
79 Thornton, “The Kingdom of Kongo and the Thirty Years' War,” 203-207. 54
to trade with whom they wished. The Dutch and Congolese alliance was further aided by Queen Njinga of Ndongo who had been consistently clashing with the Portuguese since 1624. While all of their efforts in expelling Portugal appeared successful, in Europe Portugal revolted against Spain and took up a new alliance with the Netherlands in 1643. The Dutch then allowed the Portuguese to return to certain areas of the Kongo, and King Garcia II was ordered to return Portuguese goods and accept their presence. This very much angered the both the King of Kongo and Queen Njinga of Ndongo, the former of which sent ambassadors to Brazil in an attempt to get the Dutch to renew their anti-Portuguese efforts. Njinga continued her own efforts against the Portuguese and suffered a defeat in 1646, which gave the Dutch fears Portugal would then drive them from the region. It was this fear which caused the Netherlands to reenter in their alliance with Queen Njinga and King Garcia II, and the unified parties gained victories again in 1647 and 1648. Despite all of their renewed efforts the Dutch once again withdrew their aid when Portugal retaliated with a relief force sent to Luanda in 1648.80 Thornton argued that the letters sent by King Pedro II and Count Miguel represented an official entry by the Kongo into the Thirty Years’ War. He claimed that due to the constant networks of interactions between the Portuguese and Dutch, Kongo officials would have been aware of a European war unfolding as well as the end of the twelve years truce between Spain and the Netherlands in 1621.81 Thornton in his ambitious study made the case that the Thirty Years’ War was one that not only existed outside the European theatre, but that it was one influenced by non-European factors. While he made this argument specifically for the Kingdom of Kongo, the addition of even further non-European perspectives on those connecting themes, topics, and events would make for much fruitful conclusions. Thornton connected the Americas, Africa, and Europe to a world of interconnectedness through an Atlantic world where geopolitical interests intersected throughout. Various individuals play active roles in history and while issues of one specific region could be looked at solely within the context of that region they could also be looked at within a much larger global sphere. Europeans did not engage in international affairs alone, and once they began to
80 Thornton, “The Kingdom of Kongo and the Thirty Years' War,” 207-213. 81 Ibid, 199-200. 55
establish themselves throughout the globe new individuals increasingly became connected to that web. The Dutch and Portuguese fighting for power in the Kingdom of Kongo, Angola, and Brazil took place throughout the Thirty Years’ War and the Dutch War of Independence, but it was not limited to those spheres of events. The effects of Europeans in the Kongo and Angola along with African peoples of those regions was discussed by Thornton in relation to the Thirty Years’ War. By the time that war began Europeans and Africans were connected to each other through the Atlantic world for roughly two centuries. As Thornton exemplified, by the Thirty Years’ war both continents were already well acquainted. John K. Thornton’s 2016 study "The Kingdom of Kongo and the Thirty Years' War" provided a new and refreshing outlook and analyzation on interconnectedness in the European, Atlantic, and African worlds. Thornton introduced a narrative of the Thirty Years’ War that proved it was hardly just one which occurred on a European scale with European actors. The connections of the West India Company and Groot Dessyn to the Kingdom of Kongo, both regions to Iberia, the Thirty Years’ and Eighty Years’ Wars to each other and the Atlantic world, and a variety of other occurrences all existed within greater streams of connected histories. The possibilities of new studies which could be embarked upon are near infinite. One could look at all of those mentioned topics within their own most immediate spheres of influence, but each were still occasioned by events that caused those spheres to overlap with each other. Every new scholar who introduces their own topic of a given study only provides even more perspectives and ideas to our perceptions and understandings of the world. Looking at the role the Kingdom of Kongo played in Dutch activities is important on a global scale for a number of reasons. The Kongo was a Catholic kingdom which became intertwined with European activities almost as soon as Iberians began sailing down the West African coast. As what became known as the Trans-Atlantic slave trade developed both the Kongo and Angola became significant areas of interaction, of which has come to be studied by scholars belonging to various disciplines. The Dutch did not just become one of the largest Atlantic maritime powers overnight, nor did they do solely through their own connections. The people of the Low Countries used what came natural to them to take advantage of the expanding world 56
around them. The northern provinces became a center place of commerce and reformation which fueled a new sense of identity as the modern world was developing. Once they were able to declare a republic of their own, the people of the Netherlands used the skills and connections to expand their reach into the Atlantic world and beyond. New Netherland was not a principal sphere of focous in this expansion but it was involved in it nonetheless. Expansion became an extension of the Dutch War of Independence which allowed them to move into a global theatre. As the Dutch moved into Africa, America, and Asia they built on connections made by the Europeans who established themselves earlier, and made new ones with local people throughout those regions. Among the first Europeans of the Atlantic world to arrive in what was New Netherland were also those of African descent. The connections and systems of development which brought those individuals was in development long before New Netherland was established. It is thus that before a proper description of New Netherland and the life that developed within it is discussed, the background of African peoples who ended up existing within New Netherland must be mentioned in a similar fashion as had been done for indigenous peoples and the Dutch.
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Chapter 4: Atlantic Creoles, Enslaved Africans, and an American Community
African peoples and those of African descent were present in the development of America since the first voyage of Columbus. By the time they entered Virginia in 1619 Africans and their descendants had participated in American development at every social stage from enslaved persons to conquistadors, rulers, community leaders, and everything in between. When the first individuals of African descent arrived at New Amsterdam in 1625-26 the Groot Dessyn had yet to be fully undergone. Prior to other Europeans making significant gains at coastal regions throughout the Iberian Atlantic, African and enslaved individuals throughout the Americas came through Iberian ships with the Portuguese as the main contributor. The twenty to thirty African individuals who arrived in Virginia in 1619 and those that arrived in New Netherland a few years later came directly out of that Iberian Atlantic world and entered into that of the Dutch and English. 1619 is the year which would go down in American history as one which saw the introduction of enslaved Africans into the colonial society of the future United States of America, yet some contemporary notions about this date could be misleading. The concept of starting points for the development of societies, cultures, and a progression of events in history is one which aids in understanding how later happenings unraveled. Starting points however, are concepts that can be subjectively changed and perceived differently depending on certain analyzations. 1619 was not the first time Africans came to land within what would become the future United States, it was not the starting point for a chattel and plantation based slave society, nor was it the beginning of a system which by 1619 was nearly reaching two hundred years of development. The Dutch played a large role in the enslavement of African peoples in the colonial United States, and the existence of that system in general came out of one which the Iberians had already established. 1619 is a relevant year to begin when discussing enslavement in New Netherland not just because of the people who were brought to English Virginia, but because it was also a visible point of cooperation between the Dutch and English in the commerce of enslaved humans. Today one of the
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best known publications to discuss 1619 is the New York Times Magazine’s “1619 Project.” The core aim of the “1619 Project” was “to reframe the country’s history by placing the consequences of slavery and the contributions of black Americans at the very center of our national narrative.”82 In introducing the reasons for the publication of the project Jake Silverstein put forth the idea that August of 1619 was when the first defining contradictions of the United States had come into the world. He further put forth the argument that the arrival of the very first twenty to thirty Africans in Virginia “inaugurated a barbaric system of chattel slavery that would last for the next 250 years.” Rather than attribute the barbaric system of enslavement to America’s “original sin” like other scholars, Silverstein argued that it was the “country’s very origin.” To Silverstein and the authors of the “1619 Project,” the enslavement of African peoples:
grew nearly everything that has truly made America exceptional: its economic might, its industrial power, its electoral system, its diet and popular music, the inequities of its public health and education, its astonishing penchant for violence, its income inequality, the example it sets for the world as a land of freedom and equality, its slang, its legal system and the endemic racial fears and hatreds that continue to plague it to this day.83
While valid arguments are made by the project authors, there are certain things unaddressed and ignored by them. In their project 1619 was immediately connected to the stream of development which led to chattel slavery in the United States, but at that point in time the system of chattel slavery neither existed in the original thirteen colonies nor anywhere within what was to become the future United States itself. The assertation by project director Nikole Hannah-Jones that “our democracy’s founding ideals were false when they were written” is a powerful one. It is one sure to arouse both agreements and oppositions by various individuals throughout the nation, which it most certainly had. Some of the most powerful individuals within America today
82 Jake Silverstein, “Why We Published the 1619 Project.” New York Times Magazine, New York Times, December 20, 2019, https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/12/20/magazine/1619-intro/html. 83 Ibid. 59
have vocally expressed their disagreement with this notion, but it cannot be denied that all within the United States did not become free when that nation was formed. Another statement made by Hannah-Jones that “Black Americans have fought to make them [the founding ideals] true” is one which could be opposed by far less. African-American actors were actively present in making contributions toward reaching the founding ideals of America from before the Revolution and onward into the present day. The narrative Jones put forth is one in which she included her own personal experience navigating through life as a woman of African descent in the United States, and it was certainly used to help her shape the project.84 A wide variety of topics were explored by contributors to the “1619 Project,” but something significantly missing was the discussion of 1619 itself. The project was an explorative and reflective analysis of how America today and throughout history had always been affected by its harsh past. All the authors involved used a journalistic study of history and its connection to the present to report on contemporary topics still argued, debated, and discussed in the public realm of America. Despite some historical errors and elements underdiscussed and downplayed, the project had inspired many to really think about the past in different ways and use those new understandings to create larger narratives of topics yet to be filled within a larger sphere. Colita Nichols Fairfax was one such individual who used a “1619 Project” approach in her own study on African-American history and mental wellness. In exploring the original group of individuals from 1619 who disembarked the White Lion to forcefully live enslaved in Virginia, she noted that studies and discussions regarding those people are faint. Fairfax continued to state that the “traditions, skills, philosophies are neglected in discourses, with the beginning of the analysis centered in enslavement.”85 These were people, individuals who had been enslaved, and their bondage was not the only aspect of their personhood. Following in an example set by
84 Nicole Hannah-Jones, “Our Democracy’s Founding Ideals Were False When They Were Written. Black Americans Have Fought to Make Them True,” New York Times Magazine, New York Times, (August 14, 2019), https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/08/14/magazine/black-history-american- democracy.html, hereafter cited as Hannah-Jones, “Our Democracy’s Founding Ideals.” 85 Colita Nichols Fairfax, "The Need To Be: Since 1619, Trauma and Anti-Blackness," Phylon (1960-) 57, no. 1 (2020), 64, hereafter cited as Fairfax, “The Need to Be.” 60
the “1619 Project” Fairfax considered the first individuals of African descent who arrived in Virginia to be the original founders of America. The purpose of Fairfax’s analysis was to examine “the 400 years of trauma, anti-Black violence and cultural oppression that followed the 1619 landing of African people.”86 To Fairfax, an examination of who those individuals were and what their culture existed as is essential to maintain any analysis on them. Although the concept of who “the founders of America” were if any single body of individuals existed is highly debatable, analyzing who exactly some of these earliest individuals to arrive in the future United States were is highly useful, especially since they more than likely have ancestors still within the United States today. Fairfax wrote that individuals such as Isabella and Antony of the 1619 cohort were Bantu peoples from the Kingdom of Ndongo in Angola. In Ndongo women played a central role in regulating values, and both family ties and social networks were central to identities within larger regional political structures. It is worth also pointing out that a few years after 1619 both the Dutch and Portuguese were active in Ndongo. Fairfax referenced the existence of trade networks between various Bantu peoples and brought up Ndongo’s connection to the Kingdom of Kongo. In a discussion of the largest Bantu kingdom, Fairfax referenced the existence of advanced iron technology, complex trade systems, an agrarian culture, and the existence of skilled artisans and craftsmen who engaged in textile weaving and blacksmithing. Domesticated livestock and crops were essential daily functioning. Fairfax also wrote of how just like every other culture on the planet the people of Ndongo held a special importance to musical elements. Horns, string instruments, marimbas, and drums were played with skill and in complex rhythms. Storytelling and folklore were also essential and important elements of culture, which Fairfax wrote contributed to contemporary elements which still exist in modern literature. The belief in the souls of ancestors was central factor within spiritual systems and was visible within cultural ceremonies.87 These were all aspects that the people of Ndongo and the areas surrounding it brought to America with them and held on to. They were elements that were a part of the people who existed in America from the very beginning. As the culture of America grew, along with the presence of African individuals, African
86 Fairfax, “The Need To Be,” 70. 87 Ibid, 59-60. 61
customs such as those brought by the first people to arrive became cemented in an amalgamation process which aided in the development of American culture. If one so chooses to read articles published in the “1619 Project” of the New York Times Magazine they may find a number of minor historical errors found after publication. One such example could be seen by a correction made following Hannah- Jones’ article in regards to the date the Declaration of Independence was signed. A much later editor’s note stated that “a desire to protect slavery was among the motivations of some of the colonists who fought the Revolutionary War, not among the motivations of all of them.”88 The American Revolution was a very complex matter which involved a variety of different parties and individuals who fought for a variety of different reasons. There are certainly individuals who fought in the Revolution to protect the system of enslavement which existed, but there were also a multitude who were opposed to that wretched system as well. African-Americans fought on both sides of the war, and it is no secret that there were a number who voluntarily fought for American independence alongside individuals such as George Washington and other generals of the Continental Army and militias. This is evident even in some of the most famous paintings depicting the war where those African-American soldiers are visible. It was at least partially through his experiences in the Revolution that Washington was compelled to release those he held in bondage, although the subject of Washington and enslaved individuals is another topic to debate in itself. One of the aspects that brings some of the greatest criticism against the “1619 Project” is that its authors attribute almost every aspect of American life to the system of enslavement. While this system was such a central part of this nation’s history, it was not the sole thing that influenced every aspect of American culture, history, and life. As which will be made clear time and time again throughout this work, there is no one single people, group, action, or series of events which cause history, culture, identity, societies, and et cetera to develop. Despite not being the sole aspect, it was certainly a highly influential one, and many in the contemporary world still cannot come to terms with the magnitude of which it existed, which is why some choose to look the other way
88 Hannah-Jones, “Our Democracy’s Founding Ideals.” 62
and discredit anything remotely like the “1619 Project.” Until recently the legacy of enslavement in regards to this nation’s history is not one which had been at the forefront of American consensus but whether or not one agrees or disagrees with the goals and narratives of the “1619 Project,” it’s contributors unapologetically force a discussion of those issues to the forefront of contemporary arguments. One can vehemently disagree with the goals of the project, but with its existence they cannot avoid a discussion on the matter at hand. This was something brought up by historian Leslie M. Harris who was consulted by Nikole Hannah-Jones to fact check the “1619 Project.” Following the project’s publication Harris expressed an astonishment that Hannah-Jones ran with the idea that the American Revolution was largely fought over slavery. Harris expressed to Hannah- Jones her concern that “critics would use the overstated claim to discredit the entire undertaking,” and critics certainly did just that. Despite her oppositions to the project however, Harris still acknowledged that it was a much-needed approach to correct the blindly celebratory historical narratives that once dominated our understanding of the past. This was a past filled with “histories that wrongly suggested racism and slavery were not a central part of U.S. history.” Indeed, the “1619 Project” definitely brought a new narrative into discussion, and that narrative is one of many. It does nothing to diminish the understanding of American history, but only adds a layer making it wider and more complex. For instance, it allows for a more deeper discussion of certain issues to be embarked upon. Importantly, the discussion of the initial enslaved in Virginia could also be used to bring the Dutch into the narrative of the early colonial United States. One essential note Leslie Harris made was that the characterizations of enslavement that contributors to “1619 Project” wrote of “in early America reflected laws and practices more common in the antebellum era than in Colonial times, and did not accurately illustrate the varied experiences of the first generation of enslaved people that arrived in Virginia in 1619.” The system of enslavement was one that varied far and
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wide throughout place and time, and that which occurred in the Americas in 1519, 1619, 1719, and 1819 were very different as it was something constantly evolving.89 One element that is largely missing from the what was brought up in the “1619 Project” was anything relating to the idea of something “creole.” Nikole Hannah-Jones wrote that the African-American manner of speaking in the present day had roots in the “Creole languages that enslaved people innovated in order to communicate both with Africans speaking various dialects and the English-speaking people who enslaved them.”90 This is essentially the only place that the term was brought up within the entirety of the project, and without understanding the development of creole cultures the narrative of American identity and cultures could never fully be realized. In her discussion of the earliest enslaved individuals to have come to the Americas, historian Ira Berlin opened with a section of how creoles developed. In doing so she transitioned to something which she referred to as Atlantic creole, where she distinguished between the two. The term “creole” originated from the Portuguese crioulo which described a person of African descent born in the Americas, although in some cases origins other than that of African roots were included. In describing the transition from African to creole in the colonial United States, Berlin referenced enslaved Africans purchased by Virginia’s richest planter in 1727, Robert Carter. The planter and slaver exemplified the process of stripping his newly enslaved individuals of their African identity, that is those who managed to survive the middle passage. The Africans purchased by Carter were first given new names which consisted of childlike diminutives without any surnames or marks of lineage. New arrivals were put to backbreaking and repetitive work in remote locations, provided minimal food and clothing, and forced to reside in barracks segregated by sex. Their language was forbidden and condemned by planters, and those who spoke it were ridiculed and punished for displaying what was called “harsh jargons.” Despite the horrors newly arrived Africans faced, many still resisted the total elimination of their identity. While enslaved Africans were forced to adapt to their new
89 Leslie M Harris, “Opinion: I Helped Fact-Check the 1619 Project. The Times Ignored Me,” POLITICO, March 6, 2020, https://www.politico.com/news/ magazine/2020/03/06/1619-project-new-york-times- mistake-122248. 90 Hannah-Jones, “Our Democracy’s Founding Ideals.” 64
environment many still maintained their African identity in private. Thus it was through retaining their old identity and adapting to a new one simultaneously which the creole developed and became the African-American.91 Ira Berlin argued that the sole emphasis on the American creole “omits entirely an essential element of the story,” which she described as charter generations of “Atlantic creoles.” According to Berlin “black life in mainland North America originated not in Africa or America but in the netherworld between the continents.”92 The development of the people termed as Atlantic creoles is one which is connected to the colonial United States and Americas, but also one which preceded both. While people from Africa and Europe have had interactions with each other since prehistoric times, following the fall of Constantinople those interactions evolved and changed dramatically. When the Portuguese and other Europeans began sailing down the west coast of Africa in attempts to round its cape to reach Asia, they interacted with various West African peoples along the way. As these interactions became more frequent societies along the coast began to change in certain areas as both West Africans and Europeans became more familiar with each other. African merchants and local officials began working with European sea captains, seafarers, and merchants as various types of connections were formed. With these developments came individuals who acted as intermediaries between the European and African worlds. Trading factories were soon established at various locations up and down the Atlantic coast of Africa throughout the fifteenth century. One of these earliest factories was Elmina which was established in 1482, and by the latter half of the seventeenth century there were about two dozen European factory settlements throughout the Atlantic coast of Africa.93 As these factories developed the settlements and areas they existed within began to change and population grew dramatically. By 1682 Elmina grew to have a population between fifteen and twenty thousand. Mouri on the Gold Coast grew from a population of two hundred individuals to fifteen hundred between 1550 and 1618, and
91 Ira Berlin, "From Creole to African: Atlantic Creoles and the Origins of African- American Society in Mainland North America," The William and Mary Quarterly 53, no. 2 (1996), 251-252, hereafter cited as Berlin, “From Creole to African.” 92 Ibid, 253-254. 93 Ibid, 257. 65
by 1700 the population was between five and six thousand. Cape Coast consisted of about twenty houses in 1555 and by 1680 there were at least five hundred. Between 1531 and 1690 Axim grew from a population of about five hundred to between two and three thousand. At these factory settlements European corporate employees, sailors, merchants, craftsmen, and drifters all became a constant mobile body throughout these areas, where they interacted with African peoples on a daily basis. European men and African women intermingled through various forms of interpersonal relationships, and their offspring became visible and significant members of these newly formed and rapidly developing communities. These people of both African and European descent had to navigate through a changing world where they were neither entirely European nor entirely African. The struggle for existence was tough at times as many were neither fully accepted by Europeans or Africans. Those who adopted European ways were denied by Africans the rights to marry, hold land, and inherit property. When African ways were adopted mixed individuals became known as outcasts and renegades who were called tangomaos by the Portuguese. To carve out their existence these individuals split between two worlds had mastered intercultural negotiations and some rose to achieve a significant amount of wealth and power. This was the beginning of an Atlantic creole existence, and it came to include not just the children of mixed ancestry but fully African and European individuals as well.94 The areas around these factory towns developed a unique culture with independent political lives not entirely governed by the African kingdoms upon which they existed nor the Europeans who held a firm grip on the castles and factories themselves. Within these localities some Atlantic creoles managed to establish new lineages through relationships with local elites, which at times established new state formation and class relations as well as political strife and turmoil. Some occupations which local residents developed included those as canoe men who transported goods, facilitators of trade, warehousemen, inn keepers, laborers, wood cutters, and a wide variety of other skilled workers and professions. Generally the kinds of trade that occurred involved European guns, textiles, metal wares, liquor, and beads for items like
94 Berlin, “From Creole to African,” 256-258. 66
African gold, ivory, hide, pepper, and dyewood. As time progressed the importance of commerce in human bodies grew dramatically and almost everywhere enslaved individuals were bought from the inland to coastal towns to be enslaved and sold. As the coastal world continued to change through these various interactions enslaved individuals grew to become a constant presence. Both Europeans and Africans themselves engaged in the holding, trading, and selling of enslaved individuals. With the increase in enslaved individuals so too did the numbers of the formerly enslaved and manumitted individuals, who also came to be a part of this changing environment.95 By the time the Dutch gained control over areas throughout Africa, Asia, and the Americas these Atlantic creole environments were already well developed. Again, starting dates in history are important for conceptualization, but they are not necessarily finite. American enslavement within colonial North America was just one form of enslavement which existed within the Americas as a whole, and enslavement in general existed within many cultures in many different ways throughout human history in general. In this respect 1619 may not necessarily be a good starting date for the development of slavery or a slave society in colonial North America. By the time both the British and the Dutch established a race based system of enslavement, it had grown out of that used by the Iberians as discussed. The beginnings of the kind of enslavement that grew and developed into that which occurred in the Americas however, did not necessarily have its origins in Iberia nor were Africans the first to be exploited by this process. The term “slave” itself comes from Slavic peoples and other Eastern Europeans who were enslaved by more prolific imperial entities. In their full length work dealing with African Slavery in Latin America and the Caribbean Herbert S. Klein and Ben Vinson III took it all the way back to ancient Greece and Rome. In “The Origins of the American Slave System” the authors were able to connect the system of the institution which occurred in the Americas to Europeans of the ancient world. Here they wrote about sedentary and urbanizing peoples as well as the development of a market economy. What started with enslaved artisans for the production of goods in Greece later evolved into the enslaved rural food producers for ancient Rome’s urban
95 Berlin, “From Creole to African,” 260-161. 67
dwelling population. Upon the dissolution of the Roman Empire and localization of geographic areas there was little use for enslaved individuals as producers for the sustenance of fiefdoms in a feudal society. Vinson and Klein III then discussed sugar production dominated by northern coastal Italian merchants, such as the Genoese and Venetians, throughout the Mediterranean islands. Following this development this form of enslaved agricultural workers was extended to the newly contacted islands of the eastern Atlantic. This enslavement of individuals on Mediterranean islands for the production of agricultural goods was occurring as Lisbon and Seville became involved in dealings with those Italian merchants running the enterprise. With their connections in the Iberian kingdoms developing, the Italians running various Mediterranean endeavors then aided the Iberians down the coast of Africa. This new form of interaction between Asia seeking Europeans and coastal Africans along the Atlantic throughout the fifteenth century would untimely be a prime origin point for the new system of enslavement which developed.96 The critical year of 1619 was not the earliest time enslaved Africans arrived in what would later become the future United States of America either. Under the Spanish the first African individuals arrived in Florida as early as 1528. This first individual was very much an Atlantic creole, and he was not just one of the first non-indigenous individuals to visit Florida and the American south and southwest but also one of the few who survived that journey. This individual was named Estevanico and he was born in Azamar in Morocco where he was enslaved to Andres Dorantes de Carranza.97 Sometime in 1527 Estevanico sailed to the Americas from Spain under an expedition led by Pamphilo de Narvaez as an interpreter. After a stop in Cuba Estevanico arrived at the Florida coast on the fourteenth of April in 1528. From there the crew would engage in a brutal eight year journey over land to eventually arrive in Mexico City. Of the entire expedition only four survived the journey including Estevanico, Dorantes de Carranza, and Alvar Nunez Cabeza de Vaca who was responsible for publishing the
96 Klein and Vinson, “Origins of the American Slave System,” African Slavery in Latin America and the Caribbean. 97 Douglas W Richmond, "Africa's Initial Encounter with Texas: The Significance of Afro-Tejanos in Colonial Tejas, 1528-1821," Bulletin of Latin American Research 26, no. 2 (2007), 201. 68
account of that journey. The enslaved Estevanico was then purchased by Viceroy of New Spain Antonio de Mendoza where he would be assigned as a guide, scout, and ambassador for another journey into what would become the southern United States. He was eventually killed by Native Americans during this journey in New Mexico, but it is speculated that it was he who would continue to be remembered in Zuni festivals as the “Black Kachina” into times as recent as the 1930s.98 While Estevanico was from Morocco the sources which refer to him often used the term “negro.” One of the only times that Estevanico was referred to as a “moor” was near the end of Cabeza de Vaca’s description of the brutal overland journey from Florida to Mexico City. It had been argued and speculated that Estevanico was most likely black based on how he was described in the sources.99 Estevanico was not only the first enslaved individual from Africa to explore the southern and southwestern area of the future United States from Florida to New Mexico, but one of the very first non- indigenous individuals to arrive there in general. If there is a first for those of African descent to exist in what would one day become the future United States surely Estevanico would be one to fill the role. Following his journey the Spanish would establish themselves in areas within Florida, and there developed a small but real presence of Africans both enslaved and free well before 1619. Africans in Florida were a presence within laws and customs since at least 1565. During their presence in Florida within the period up until 1763 some Africans were able to achieve both citizenship and property rights and those enslaved held certain protections under the law unknown in the British colonies.100 One of the reasons for this was that Spanish law did not define enslavement specifically as something related to race like it had come to within the British colonies, and allowed for enslaved individuals to hire themselves out and own a variety of property. In addition, it was much more common for masters to manumit enslaved individuals in their wills. By the seventeenth century there had already developed a small but significant population of free people of
98 Dylan Penningroth, "Writing Slavery's History," OAH Magazine of History 23, no. 2 (2009), 14. 99 Rayford W Logan, "Estevanico, Negro Discoverer of the Southwest: A Critical Reexamination," Phylon (1940- 1956) 1, no. 4 (1940), 305-314. 100 Sean Sellers and Greg Asbed, "The History and Evolution of Forced Labor in Florida Agriculture," Race/Ethnicity: Multidisciplinary Global Contexts 5, no. 1 (2011), 48. 69
African descent as well as ethnically mixed children of marriages between African women and Spanish government officials, planters, and merchants in Florida.101 While the institution of enslavement over the course of the seventeenth century developed into one increasingly more race and chattel based, in Spanish Florida this did not occur until planters of the English colonies began moving south in the following century. This is in part why Florida increasingly became a place of refuge for those enslaved who fled the progressively more harsh system in those English colonies such as Georgia and the Carolinas. It is perhaps because the United States came out of the thirteen British colonies in North America that Nikole Hannah-Jones and the “1619 Project” contributors attributed 1619 Virginia to the origins of the American slave system and its legacy. 1619 again, is an important starting point, but it does not create a full picture of what actually existed in the year 1619 itself. It was through the Iberian routes that the very first enslaved Africans entered both Virginia in 1619 and New Netherland in 1625-26, and the individuals of both were also very similar and connected in more ways than not. The analysis given by both Ira Berlin on Atlantic Creoles and Colita Nichols Fairfax on the origins of the 1619 arrivals could both be used when looking into the cultures of those early arrivals in Virginia and New Netherland. Today it had generally come to be accepted that the original twenty to thirty African individuals who were brought to Virginia in 1619 originated from a Portuguese vessel traveling from Luanda in Angola to Veracruz, Mexico. English privateer and captain of the White Lion John Jope gained his license to capture enemy ships from the Dutch Prince William of Orange. Privateer Daniel Elfirth who captained the Treasurer gained his license from the Duke of Savoy. These were the two ships responsible for attacking the Portuguese ship which the 1619 arrivals to Virginia were aboard. During their privateering missions both captains succeeded in capturing the Portuguese ship Joao Bautista captained by Manuel Mended de Cunha. This was the ship traveling to Veracruz from Luanda, and it carried three hundred and fifty enslaved individuals. The vessel was captured after depositing some cargo, including enslaved
101 Jane Landers, "Founding Mothers: Female Rebels in Colonial New Granada and Spanish Florida," The Journal of African American History 98, no. 1 (2013), 7-23. 70
Africans, in Jamaica after a rough voyage. Jope and Elfirth split their captured cargo, each taking about thirty enslaved individuals before heading toward Virginia.102 Writing in 1624, Captain John Smith stated that twenty African individuals were brought to Virginia by a Dutch man of war. On September thirtieth of 1619 the Virginia colony’s secretary of state John Pory wrote to English envoy at The Hague, Sir Dudley Carleton, where he referenced a Dutch man of war also. He stated that this vessel (the White Lion) met with an English man of war the Treasurer in the Caribbean following which came to Virginia with cargo for Samuel Argall. In John Rolfe’s 1619/20 letter to Sir Edwin Sandys he mentioned that toward the end of August in 1619, a Dutch man of war arrived in Virginia headed by a “Capt Jope” along with an Englishman named “Mr. Marmaduke.” According to Rolfe, Jope brought nothing “but 20. and odd” Africans which the “Governor and Cape Marchant” bought at the easiest and best rate they could. It had previously been suspected that the African individuals who originally came to Virginia in 1619 were from the Iberian Americas, but more credible evidence now suggests that those individuals came directly from Africa based on Spanish archives.103 Between 1615 and 1622 a Lisbon financer Antonio Fernandes Delvas served as the general contractor in charge of supplying African slaves for an American market, which was called an asentista . During the year between June eighteenth of 1619 and June twenty-first of 1620, six slavers arrived at Veracruz all of which originated at Luanda. In total for that year two thousand individuals were taken from Africa and 1,161 had arrived at the final destination in Veracruz. Most of these losses came from shipwreck and deaths from horrors of the middle passage, but in one case losses came from the seizure of cargo by an enemy ship. This one slave ship under attack was the San Juan Bautista captained by Manuel Mendes de Achunha. It was reported that Mendes de Achunha was robbed at sea near Campeche by English privateers. Three hundred and fifty enslaved individuals were loaded on the San Juan Bautista at Luanda, of which one hundred and forty-seven were able to be maintained by Mendes de
102 Linda M. Heywood and John K. Thornton, "In Search of the 1619 African Arrivals: Enslavement and Middle Passage," The Virginia Magazine of History and Biography 127, no. 3 (2019), 201. 103 Engel Sluiter, "New Light on the "20. and Odd Negroes" Arriving in Virginia, August 1619," The William and Mary Quarterly 54, no. 2 (1997), 395-396, hereafter cited as Sluiter, "New Light.” 71
Achunha following the attack. Flushing, Zeeland (where it was said the Dutch ship originated) had around that time an English garrison placed there since 1585 at the request of Elizabeth I.104 The connection between both England and the Netherlands in bringing the first individuals of African descent to what developed into the first thirteen colonies of the United States is evident. While it was written that it was a Dutch ship that met with the Treasurer, it had come to be accepted that the White Lion was an English ship with Dutch connections. The fact that the 1619 seizure of an Iberian ship happened during the Twelve Years’ Truce between Spain and the Netherlands further suggested it was an English operation. Because the cohort of enslaved Africans who first arrived in Virginia and New Netherland originated form Iberian vessels, were from the area of around Luanda, and were at least in part seized and trafficked through a Dutch involvement both cohorts were very related indeed. As stated, the first individuals of African descent arrived in New Amsterdam around 1625-1626. While records from the early phase of New Netherland are limited, the dates and origins of the first enslaved Africans in the colony could be found through later documents where they are mentioned variously. One such document was a petition dated the twenty-fifth of February in 1644. Within that document Paulo Angolo, “little” Anthony, “little” Manuel, “big” Manuel, Manuel de Gerrit de Reus, Simon Congo, Anthony Portuguese, Gracia d’Angols, Piter Santomee, Jan Francisco, and Jan Fort Orange all requested their freedom from the West India Company. It was stated they served the WIC for eighteen to nineteen years which would date their arrival to around those given above. The names of these individuals are very descriptive in finding their origins and all suggest ties to the Iberian Atlantic. The name “Jan” could easily have been the Dutch variant of “Juan” especially as it had been done in the case for Juan “Jan” Rodriguez. Manuel was a common Iberian name, and “Anthony” may have also been a variant to another Iberian name especially considering the surname of one was “Portuguese.” Simon Congo was likely to have had origins in the Kingdom of Kongo, and the surnames of Paulo Angola and Gracia d’Angols suggest an Angolan origin. The surname of Piter Santomee suggested an origin from the Portuguese factory town of
104 Sluiter, "New Light.” 72
Sao Tome. During the time of their arrival the truce between the Iberian Kingdoms and the Netherlands would have been ceased (unlike in 1619), the Netherlands would have already been in talks with the Kingdom of Kongo, and the Groot Dessyn would have been realized, but the Dutch seizures of Iberian land on the African coast and in the Americas had yet to be fully successful. It is due to this situation that these first African men all would have been captured from an Iberian ship or ships through Dutch privateering. While these African individuals were very similar and connected to those in Virginia prior to arrival, following it they would have experienced a world somewhat different however, as under the Dutch most enslaved individuals belonged to the WIC rather than private individuals.105 The petition for manumission by these individuals was approved and they were granted freedom along with their wives, but this was a freedom not without limitations. Their freedom could be revoked at any time due to the failure to meet the conditions of manumission. These conditions are evident where it was stated that each man for “as long as he lives” must pay annually to the Company “30 schepels of maize, or wheat, pease, or beans, and one fat hog valued at 20 guilders.” The failure to provide this yearly tribute was to result in the manumitted individual thus “forfeiting his freedom and again going back into the servitude of the said Company.” In addition, “their children, at present born or yet to be born, shall be bound to serve the honorable West India Company here on land or water, wherever their services are required, on condition of receiving fair wages from the Company.” While the labor of the manumitted individuals children appeared to include wages in writing, these children still remained human property of the Company, despite being born to free parents. It is because of these very conditions that none of the newly manumitted individuals could truly be called free. It was thus that it has come to be referred to as a half-freedom which was hardly permanent, and held a variety of limitations. Despite this, upon manumission these individuals were granted certain levels of property to ease their ability to provide this tribute payment. In the same manumission document it was stated that each individual
105 Arnold J. F. Van Laer, trans. New York Historical Manuscripts: Dutch. Vol. IV, (Baltimore, MD: Genealogical Publishing, 1974), 212-213, hereafter cited as Van Laer, New York Historical Manuscripts: Dutch, Vol. IV. 73
was granted land “to earn their livelihood by agriculture.”106 It had been written that this area existed in the vicinity of where Manhattan’s Washington Square Park exists today, and the community of which these early African-Americans built will be discussed. A little over two years following this manumission date another Jan Francisco “the younger” was manumitted at the request of Dominie Megapolensis. Francisco “this younger” was promised his freedom, or half-freedom, years earlier by former director- general Wouter Van Twiller. Similarly to those manumitted before, Fancisco “the younger” was also required to pay the Company an annual “10 skepels” of wheat or something equal to that value.107 A number of these first manumitted Africans had children, which obviously meant women were present as well. While women were mentioned much less in the historical documents they were still present within them. Of the men granted their half-freedom in the previous manumission document at least some of them had wives and children. One manumission petition approved in 1663 referenced “a sickly old black women” named Mayken, and it was stated that she belonged to the WIC since 1628.108 In a teaching aid put together by the New York Historical Society following a 2005-2006 exhibition on “Slavery in New York” a profile of a woman named Dorothy Creole was provided. Here Dorothy was described to be of the first female African women to have arrived in New Amsterdam, presumably in 1628. It was claimed that Dorothy and the other women were brought to the colony to provide wives for the African men enslaved to the Company. She was stated to be the wife of Paulo Angola, or “Angolo,” thus she would have been granted half-freedom with him in 1644. 109 One of the records she was referenced to be a part in was that which recorded the 1643 baptism of a young “Antonio” where Dorothy sat in as godmother. This young Antonio as well as Dorothy were to have around that time been enslaved to Captain de Vries who was involved in Kieft’s War along with other African-Americans. One issue with this description is the
106 Van Laer, New York Historical Manuscripts: Dutch, Vol. IV, 212-213. 107 Charles T. Gehring, trans. Laws & Writs of Appeal 1647-1663, (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1991), 60. 108 Petition of Mayken to be Granted Her Freedom, (1663, April 19), Retrieved from http://digitalcollections.archives.nysed.gov/index.php/Detail/objects/55275. 109 Life Stories: Profiles of Black New Yorkers During Slavery and Emancipation, Retrieved from http://www.slaveryinnewyork.org/PDFs/Life_Stories.pdf. 74
unclarity of the sources. There were multiple females described as black in the baptismal records as well as men named Anthony, but no specific “Dorothy” or “Antonio.” Despite this, as mentioned earlier the name Anthony may have been used in place of Antonio in some records. The names of African women present in the baptismal records for 1643 are Pallas-Negrinne van Angola, Catharina van Angola, Susanna Pieters-negrinne, and Victorie Paulus-Negrinne.110 Between the years 1639 and 1655 about one to three children of the New Amsterdam’s black population were being baptized each year, with community members of both European and African descent standing in as witnesses. According to general customs of the Dutch Reformed Church only the children of confessing members were allowed to be baptized, which indicated that a number of the adult black population also belonged to that congregate. A number of legal marriages had taken place within the church, which also would have been some of the first marriages between African-Americans in the future United States. The participation of these individuals in baptisms at the Dutch Reformed Church added another layer of the African-American community that was developing in New Netherland. While minimal evangelization efforts were made by the Dutch in New Netherland, Atlantic Creoles of the Iberian world and people of Angola and the Kingdom of Kongo would certainly have been familiar with Christianity if not a Christian themselves. Prior to his assignment to New Netherland in 1628 where he established the colony’s first church, Dominie Michaelius served his church on the coast of Guinea. It was there that in 1626 he suggested two young mulattoes to be trained as missionaries in Holland, to return to their native lands working for the church. While it was said Michaelius served in Guinea he was originally assigned to Brazil but was put off course due to some issues there. In 1626 the Dutch were just beginning to put their Groot Dessyn into effect and their hold on West African sites wouldn’t have been fully realized. At this time one of the places they had been established was at Ft. Nassau in Ghana, and if this was indeed the location Michaelius served it would be likely that the two mulattos he referred to would have been from the Atlantic Creole community there. Michaelius’ successor Dominie
110 New Amsterdam Reformed Dutch Church Baptisms 1639-1659, (2013, October 18), Retrieved from https://brooklynancestry.com/new-amsterdam-reformed-dutch-church-baptisms-1639-1659/. 75
Bogardus in 1638 requested from the Netherlands a schoolmaster to be sent to the colony in order “to teach and train the youth of both Dutch and blacks in the knowledge of Jesus Christ.”111 Dominie Bogardus encouraged the present African-Americans of the colony to attend church services as well as observe their religious holidays.112 The participation of African-Americans in the Dutch Reformed Church of New Netherland was so prominent that in 1641 the governing body of classis in Amsterdam took notice that in the colony a number of the African descended population were being brought to “the right knowledge of God.”113 Because of the level of community participation and “freedom” held by New Netherlands black community it had been suggested by some that the area around New Netherland did not turn from a society with slaves to a slave society until the 1664 British takeover. The evidence on the progression of events suggested otherwise however. The 1640 case of John Punch of the 1619 cohort in Virginia and the manumission of the 1625-26 cohort in New Amsterdam are stark contrasts for a brief period where they still differed. Punch in 1640 became the first example of a lifelong position of enslavement based on race in the future thirteen colonies, and the 1644 manumission of those enslaved to the WIC was an opposite ruling indeed. While the liberties given to those in New Amsterdam in 1644 were much more than that Punch received, they were still held in a conditional bondage. During the time of 1644 a number of changes were occurring in the Dutch Atlantic world. In New Netherland the population had yet to grow which allowed for African-Americans to be a much more visible part of the community. Following the arrival of Stuyvesant, the population boom, and major Dutch gains in the Atlantic world the dynamic of what it was like did begin to evolve in the Dutch colony. In terms of later ministers who arrived, they appeared to have had much more involvement in the enslavement of Africans then those previous. Dominie Johannes Megapolensis owned one or two enslaved individuals during his
111 Gerald Francis de Jong, "The Dutch Reformed Church and Negro Slavery in Colonial America," Church History 40, no. 4 (1971), 428-429, hereafter cited as De Jong, “The Dutch Reformed Church and Negro Slavery in Colonial America.” 112 Ira Berlin and Leslie M Harris, Slavery in New York, (New York: The New Press, 2005), 39, hereafter cited as Berlin and Harris, Slavery in New York. 113 De Jong, “The Dutch Reformed Church and Negro Slavery in Colonial America,” 431. 76
quarter century residency in New Netherland. It had also been argued that Dominie Johannes Polhemius participated in the slave trade while in Brazil, and during his time on Long Island he also purchased an enslaved individual on Manhattan Island for 440 guilders.114 Baptisms within the church decreased dramatically during the later years. From 1656 to 1664 there was only one African-American child to be baptized. Dominie Selyns also claimed in those years that African-Americans only baptized their children to deliver them “from bodily slavery.”115 The shift from West India Company ownership of enslaved Africans to private ownership also reflected the shift as it was occurring in the colony. Two years after the 1644 manumission the first recorded sale of an enslaved person to a private individual outside of the WIC took place in New Netherland. This was one man of African descent named Anthony, who had been sold to a Richard Lord of which was listed in a 1646 bill of sale submitted to the provincial secretary.116 The population of private slaveholders in the area then increased dramatically. Based on a 1665 tax list consisting of information from 254 individuals between 1663 and 1664 Joyce Goodfriend found that thirty of those individuals were involved in slaveholding. These thirty individuals all fell within various economic positions with fourteen of whom were in the highest two tax brackets. The other sixteen fell within various lower brackets. The professions of these individuals included a butcher, a turner, tavern keepers, and mariners while those in the top tax brackets were merchants and Company officials. Of these thirty slaveowners seventeen were Dutch, five were English, four were French, and four were German. This sample was based only on a percentage of the colony as a whole, and it is likely that there were even more private slaveholders. In her 1978 study Goodfriend came to the conclusion that “slavery had already passed from a discrete Company institution to a community- wide mode of labor exploitation, regularly reinforced by importations and legitimized as a normal and desirable way of life” well before the English takeover.117 Dutch gains in
114 De Jong, “The Dutch Reformed Church and Negro Slavery in Colonial America,” 426. 115 Leslie M Harris, In the Shadow of Slavery: African Americans in New York City, 1626- 1863, (Switzerland: University of Chicago Press, 2004), 17. 116 Joyce D Goodfriend, "Burghers and Blacks: The Evolution of a Slave Society at New Amsterdam," New York History 59, no. 2 (1978), 132, hereafter cited as Goodfriend, “Burghers and Blacks.” 117 Goodfriend, “Burghers and Blacks,” 143-144. 77
the Americas and African coast in solidifying their participation in the trade of enslaved humans helped facilitate this. Based on the Transatlantic-Slave Trade Database it was estimated that the Dutch transported about 1,400 enslaved Africans to the Americas between 1501 and 1600, and 219,900 between 1601 and 1700. For transatlantic voyages as a whole it was estimated that upward of half a million enslaved Africans were transported to the Americas on Dutch ships with between fifty to one hundred thousand dying en route. During the period between 1650 and 1675 when the sugar trade was experiencing a revolution in the Caribbean it was estimated that the Dutch vessels controlled over twenty percent of the trade.118 The dramatic increase in Dutch participation as the seventeenth century progressed is evident. In terms of enslaved individuals arriving in New Netherland, a major event facilitating this would have been the 1634 acquisition of Curacao by the Dutch. That island then became a collecting place for enslaved Africans to be sent throughout the Dutch Atlantic, and the connections Peter Stuyvesant had with both Curacao and New Netherland is significant. This was around the time that attempts at the Groot Dessyn would have been the most aspirational, and even though it did not succeed WIC participation in the slave trade became an increasing element of their ventures. Between 1636 and 1645 over 25,000 enslaved Africans were shipped by the Dutch to Brazil alone, which was aided through their 1637 capture of Elmina.119 In 1652, Peter Stuyvesant was authorized to allow as many enslaved individuals to be imported directly from Africa as was needed “for the cultivation of the soil.”120 With the loss of Brazil in 1654 the role of New Netherland was increased within the Dutch Atlantic, and the number of human cargoes began to come in higher numbers for the sale to private individuals.121 In 1657 instructions were given on the public sale of enslaved individuals
118 Rik van Welie, "Slave Trading and Slavery in the Dutch Colonial Empire: A Global Comparison," NWIG: New West Indian Guide / Nieuwe West-Indische Gids 82, no. 1/2 (2008), 53-56. 119 Susanah Shaw Romney, New Netherland Connections: Intimate Networks and Atlantic Ties in Seventeenth-Century America, (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2014), 193-192, hereafter cited as Shaw Romney, New Netherland Connections. 120 De Jong, “The Dutch Reformed Church and Negro Slavery in Colonial America,” 423. 121 Goodfriend, “Burghers and Blacks,” 126. 78
which stated that no WIC officer could purchase human property except at public auctions.122 Like the English in Virginia, the Dutch colony of New Netherland shifted the dynamics of human bondage within it from the time of first colonization to its maturity. While certain aspects of freedom existed in New Netherland, by the time the English took it over that would decrease dramatically. Some aspects of that will be touched upon later, but one crucial point is that an African-American community had developed in New Netherland and the colonies that followed consisted of both free and enslaved individuals with roots in an Iberian and Dutch Atlantic world. This community began with first arrivals who were forced to interact with each other from different origins. Being that earliest population of individuals belonged to the WIC they were most likely housed on WIC property. Initially the earliest enslaved individuals were kept in makeshift WIC barracks as they built up New Amsterdam. Those who were later privately owned stayed in a place provided by their owner, and there were examples of owners who kept families together (unlike when the chattel base system developed). The first land grants to African individuals began in 1643 to those individuals who participated in director-general Kieft’s war against native peoples. When land was granted to Manuel Gerrit de Reus in that year it was stated that other African-Americans were already living in that area as his neighbors.123 In August of that year Domingo Anthony was granted ten acres by Kieft. A widow named Catalina Anthony was granted about eight acres adjacent to Domingo’s land. That December Manuel Trumpeter was granted eighteen acres of land. Trumpeter was referred to as a “Captain of the Blacks” and it was thus suggested that he led the African-Americans who fought with the Dutch against the local Lenape and other native peoples. Trumpeter’s land was near where today rests Washington Square North and Fifth Avenue. The individuals manumitted in the 1644 document were also granted land in the vicinity of Trumpeter’s land. It had been estimated that by the mid-century African-American farmsteads took up about one
122 Goodfriend, “Burghers and Blacks,” 140-141. 123 Isaac Newton Phelps Stokes, The Iconography of Manhattan Island: 1498-1909. Vol. VI, (New York, NY: 1915), 123, hereafter cited as Stokes, The Iconography of Manhattan Island. 79
hundred and thirty acres of land on Manhattan.124 Lots dotted up and down the west side of Bowery Road between Prince Street and Astor Place, some of which was taken from land formerly owned by former director-general Van Twiller. Another was said to have been granted to Manuel the Spaniard in 1651, which was marked by a great tree about two hundred feet south Houston Street. In 1667 Governor Nicholls confirmed that in the year between 1659 and 1660 Stuyvesant had granted several free African- Americans plots of land along the highway in the vicinity of his own bowery. Of those individuals included Christoffel Santome, Antony Sopie, and Solomon Pieters. Others confirmed to have lived in this area included Domingo Angola, his wife Francienne Mandeere, Willem Antonys Portugies, Claes de Neger, Assento Angola, Manuel Sanders, Pieter Tambeer, Antony “a blind negro,” among more.125 During the New Netherland era African-Americans were the most consistent inhabitants, particularly on Manhattan, as European individuals tended to come and go, especially during the early years of settlement. What existed on Manhattan was also one of the first free communities of African-Americans to have existed within what would become the future United States as a whole. As the case with New York neighborhoods today, even back then they continued to change demographically. While a number of the land grants initially made to African-American residents of New Netherland were confirmed by Richard Nicholls, the area which was once referred to as the “Land of the Blacks” would quickly shift in dynamics. Some elements of this shift will be further brought up when the English takeover of the colony is discussed. In Jasper Danckaerts 1691 journal discussing a 1679 walk up Broadway he recalled witnessing “many habitations of negroes, mulattoes and whites.”126 Here it could be seen that white inhabitants had already began to move into the area. Just over one hundred years following the English takeover one free African-American man named Jacob Francis from Amwell Township in New Jersey traversed both the Hudson and Delaware rivers of the former Dutch colony to fight for American independence alongside George
124 Berlin and Harris, Slavery in New York, 42-44. 125 Stokes, The Iconography of Manhattan Island, 123-124. 126 John Franlkin Jameson, ed. Original Narratives of Early American History: Journal of Jasper Danckaerts 1679-1680, (New York, NY: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1913), 65. 80
Washington. While the extended origins of Francis cannot be certain, it is definitely possible given his free status, the free status of his mother, and position within a location formerly under Dutch rule that he could have had roots in the Dutch era. Whatever Francis’ origins may be, as the first permanent residents of the future New York City African-Americans contributed to building the very foundations of that city. While Dutch culture today had become mostly absent from a visible presence in the city, African-American culture never ceased and remains a giant part of the New York’s continuous makeup.
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Chapter 5: Establishing a Remote Colony on the Hudson
The earliest non-indigenous individuals to arrive in the area between the Delaware and Connecticut Rivers were at first new strangers in an old land populated for thousands of years. The first documented journey of foreigners arriving within an area once called Lenapehoking was the French sponsored voyage of La Dauphin captained by Florentine Giovanni da Verrazzano. While the Italian has a statue dedicated to him in Battery Park and a magnificent bridge named after him, he and his crew did not make particular notes on the Hudson nor appear to have disembarked. Throughout the journey they did interact with Native Americans, and when the crew reached New York Bay they presumably held one indigenous boy captive. The capture of this boy most likely occurred along the Delmarva Peninsula’s coast in either the Virginia, Maryland, or Delaware section. Upon anchoring about twenty members of the crew went to land and traveled about two leagues inland. There they found an old women along with a young girl and boy hiding within tall grass. Both young ones faced an attempted capture by La Dauphin’s crew of whom were successful in abducting the boy. It was said that this boy was to be taken to King Francis I as a gift. No other records of the boy exist and it is unclear what happened to him following his abduction. While it is not probable that those encountered were Lenape, it is still possible and they were most likely Algonquian speaking. So on as the Europeans went up the coast they introduced European culture to a wide variety of the people they met. There was a large gap between the voyage of Verrazzano and the next definite recording of Europeans to enter the area came with Robert Juet’s log of the voyage of the Half Moon. This does not rule out the possibility of other European sailors, explorers, and fishermen coming to the area within that over eighty year gap. The journey of Hudson and the Half Moon put a Dutch and English claim to the land where it had not been done for the French. Soon Dutch ships would come to the shores of New Netherland and establish their first real bonds with indigenous people. It was in those years that the first non-indigenous individuals would come to live upon its shores. Juan Rodriguez came to reside on the Hudson through connections made in the
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Atlantic world. By the 1610s Spain became heavily invested in the viceroyalties of New Spain and Peru, while places such as the island of Hispaniola had increasingly become less manageable. Within the island itself authorities in Santo Domingo faced great problems managing it as a whole because of various mountains within and eastward flowing currents offshore. These factors allowed various smuggling dens and maroon communities to develop throughout the island and particularly in the north and west. To combat this in 1603 the Crown ordered that the governor of Hispaniola force the rural population to vacate unmanageable parts of the island to the vicinity around the capital. A number of individuals rebelled against their forced eviction and the names of three different men called Juan Rodriguez appeared to be indicted for participating in this rebellion as well as engaging in illegal smuggling activities with the foreign enemies of Spain such as the Dutch. Because of the timing and background of the geopolitical location it is very likely that one of those Juan Rodriguez’s formed personal bonds with Dutchmen and left for the Hudson aboard the Jonge Tobias. His refusal to continue on to the Republic made Rodriguez the first non-indigenous person of color to have lived in the New York/ New Jersey area as well as the first in general which was a special feat. While he did not appear in records following those dealing with Adriaen Block and his competitors in 1614, it is assumed he remained in the area or left eventually to elsewhere.127 The next group of recorded residents wouldn’t arrive for settlement until just over a decade later when it was decided New Netherland would become a proper colony. Rather than being sent over by private merchants or cartels, this first 1624 group were sent to the colony by the West India Company directly. This group consisted primarily of around thirty Walloon families. A number of these individuals were from the large population of refugees that came to exist in the Netherlands, and were promised land for six years’ service to the WIC. Significantly this group of refugees came from Leiden, which was the same location the Pilgrims of the Plymouth Colony lived just years earlier. Perhaps if those English Puritans chose to stay among the Dutch for another few years then they too would have been a part of the first WIC settling voyage
127 Stevens-Acevedo, Weterings, and Francés, “Juan Rodriguez and the Beginnings of New York City,” 9. 83
to New Netherland. Among this first group included the recently married Flemish textile worker Joris Rapalje and French teenager Catalina Trico, both of whom seemed to be parentless further pointing to refugee status. During the voyage to New Netherland four other couples were married at sea. Upon arrival these families were split and sent to remote locations up the Hudson, on the Delaware, as well as the Connecticut. Catalina Trico and Joris Rapalje were also the first non-indigenous individuals recorded to have a child born in New Netherland as well as of the first to own land on Manhattan. Their daughter Sarah was born in 1625 and made up one of eleven children who existed within this first group of settlers to the area. When Sarah matured she would eventually wed the overseer of a large tobacco plantation near Greenwich Village and the couple would produce eight children of their own. The initial property put up by Rapalje and Trico existed on Pearl Street close to Ft. Amsterdam which was one of the first constructed in the newly established European settlement. Upon the arrival and split within the first settlers to the colony, Manhattan was still not yet a place of settlement. The group at the mouth of the Hudson would first come to reside on Governors Island which proved to be a difficult situation that needed to be changed.128 The first man assigned to act as director-general was Willem Verhulst who arrived not long after with about a hundred more settlers of Walloon and other ethnic origins. Verhulst did not achieve much during his post and along with his wife became highly disliked by the early colonists. It was at least partially due to this that he was quickly removed of his position and returned to the Republic. One thing that did occur while he was director-general was the decision to consolidate the spread out colonists into one single settlement on Governors Island. This was ordered by the WIC for various reasons including news of a massacre in Virginia. The regrouping of settlers did not occur right away however. It was not until Peter Minuit came in as the succeeding director-general that all colonists made it down to the island. Under Minuit things would change significantly, and it was him who was responsible for moving the center of the
128 Shorto, Island at the Center of the World, 37-42. And Mark Meuwese, "The Dutch Connection: New Netherland, the Pequots, and the Puritans in Southern New England, 1620—1638," Early American Studies 9, no. 2 (2011), 304-305, hereafter cited as Meuwese, “The Dutch Connection.” 84
colony from the small Governors Island to the southern tip of Manhattan. 129 In doing so it was Peter Minuit who became known as the individual who made the now famous (or infamous) twenty-four dollar purchase of the Manhattan Island. This purchase had been explored by many over the course of nearly four hundred years since it occurred. The analysis and summary of the purchase by Edwin G. Burrows and Mike Wallace in their massive work Gotham was one, and they found that in actuality the purchase wasn’t for twenty-four dollars at all. The purchase itself is something those authors referred to as a myth due to the inconsistency of where it came from. Within a 1626 letter by a Dutch merchant it was reported that he heard of WIC representatives purchasing Manhattan for sixty guilders. This was something he claimed to have heard from ship passengers arriving from the colony. In 1847 one New York historian converted the sixty guilders into twenty-four dollars using his current rates of exchange. In 1877 another historian asserted that this was a sum paid in trinkets, odds and ends. The exchange rate for sixty guilders at the time of Gotham’s publication was valued at six hundred nine dollars and forty-two cents. The purchase of Staten Island may provide some insight as to what went on in that of Manhattan as a similar situation could have occurred. Staten Island was purchased for axes, hoes, knives, kettles, and other European materials which would probably not have been valued at much in the grand scheme of things. Regardless of how the purchase was made, thus came a permanent settlement of Europeans on the southern tip of Manhattan which would until 1664 be referred to as New Amsterdam.130 Burrows and Wallace brought up a valid point regarding the purchase. It is not explicitly stated by which indigenous individuals that Minuit had purchased Manhattan from. The colonists would surely not have known the various nuances on which ties held certain native groups to certain pieces of land. What the authors suggested was that it may be possible that the people whom Manhattan was purchased from may not have even been from that island.131 This was something further discussed by William Starna and Robert Grumet. Both individuals also noted that it is impossible to determine
129 Shorto, Island at the Center of the World, 47-49. 130 Burrows and Wallace, Gotham, xiv-xv. 131 Ibid, xv. 85
with any adequacy which native group signed the deed which transferred Manhattan to the Dutch, whether they had any authority to do so, and if they knew what exactly they were selling.132 It had already been explained that communication between the Dutch and individuals such as the coastal Lenape had little more means of communication other than hand signals which was described two years after the purchase by Michaelius. It is unlikely that a pidgin Delaware language would have yet become as widespread as it was later because at this time the longest colonists would have been in the Manhattan area for two years at most and fur trading outposts were small and considerably distant. This purchase is one of the first times which documented a European presence displacing Native Americans from an area in mainstream North America. As New Netherland was established as a new European outpost which would undergo immediate construction, lower Manhattan became a place where Algonquian speaking peoples could no longer call home permanently. While there was a constant presence of native peoples for purposes such as trade and relations, as European migration progressed those groups were pushed further and further out to the country. As shown Willem Verhulst’s time as director-general of New Netherland was short and he did not achieve much. Minuit was responsible for the famous “purchase” which established a European presence on Manhattan, and perhaps introduced the continent to an essential part of business dealings which would drip into the very fabric of New York and American culture. Being non-Dutch himself with a group that consisted of Atlantic Creole Africans, Walloons, French, Flemish, and yes, Dutch individuals, Peter Minuit also introduced a kind of multiethnic fabric into Manhattan which would permanently exist in not just that island’s DNA, but that of America as the world knows it today. While Peter Minuit was not the first director-general, and Europeans would definitely have ended up on Manhattan at some point regardless, he is certainly the person responsible for one of the smartest decisions made regarding the European colony up to that point. Similarly to his predecessor however, Minuit’s run as director- general would also be a short one. Minuit too would be recalled from his post, and in general it wouldn’t be until Peter Stuyvesant came to fill the post in 1647 that the colony
132 Starna, “Assessing American Indian-Dutch Studies,” 15-16. 86
would have a stable and wise individual as director-general. Until then, New Amsterdam remained a small outpost with a poor government which existed as the capital of a scarcely populated land made up of a few trading outposts and the patroonship of Rensselaerswyck. Unfortunately official court records of the colony do not currently exist for the years prior to Willem Kieft. It was during the years following Minuit’s purchase however that New Amsterdam became established as a European outpost at the mouth of the Hudson. With this location established as a principal capital for the colony it was time to transform the land into something which resembled the Dutch homeland. Numerous scholars have studied how much the architectural structure of the colony resembled patria and how much was different. While Europeans attempted to build something in their own style and one that resembled their homeland, it was also very different. Dutch cities were the center of the international occurrences within the Dutch Atlantic, but as the center of New Netherland the physical structure of New Amsterdam could never fully resemble the centuries-old development of an urban structure that existed in places like Amsterdam and The Hague. This is not to say attempts were not made, Dutch buildings in the colony were constructed like those which they had already known. They consisted of being built with wood-line pits being dug six to seven feet deep and sod roofs, which may have resembled structures in areas such as Drenthe up until the nineteenth-century. These homes were originally meant to be temporary, with above ground structures being built a few years later. Anne-Marie Cantwell and Diana diZerega Wall argued that builders may have just added wooden frames, raised the roofs, and used the original pits for cellars. These types of structures had particularly been found by archeologists in areas along the upper Hudson.133 Daniel Denton wrote in his description of the area much later that New Amsterdam was “built most of Brick and Stone, and covered with red and black Tile.”134 The description of Denton signified how
133 Anne-Marie Cantwell and Diana diZerega Wall, "Landscapes and Other Objects: Creating Dutch New Netherland," New York History 89, no. 4 (2008), 323, hereafter cited as Cantwell and diZerega Wall, “Landscapes and Other Objects.” 134 Denton, A Brief Description of New York, 24. 87
the Dutch continued to structure their colony to resemble patria. In his letter 1628 letter Dominie Michaelius wrote that a windmill was in the process of being built to saw lumber and a gristmill was already complete. He also wrote that Fort Amsterdam was in the process of being built “of good quarry stone, which is to be found not far from here in abundance.”135 It goes without question that everything was undergone in attempts at a European fashion, and this society did resemble that of the patria in certain aspects. Despite their attempt however, America was America and there was no way to fully recreate something that entirely resembled the Netherlands without elements of America and the Atlantic world. One particular element which set places such as New Amsterdam apart was the presence of enslaved labor in constructing the foundation that a European molded outpost, town, and city would be built up upon. The land was already worked by native peoples for centuries, and those enslaved by the WIC would be the next to work on further clearing the land for development. On the twenty-second of March in 1639 Jacob Stoffelsen of Zeeland “testified, declared and attested” to himself being an overseer to those individuals of African descent who built the foundation of New Amsterdam prior to Kieft’s arrival as director general. Stoffelsen stated that under director-general Van Twiller as an overseer he was employed in seeing these African individuals build Ft. Amsterdam which they completed in 1635, as well as cutting various firewood and timber, building the guardhouse, splitting rails, clearing land, burning lime, “and helping to gather the Company’s grain in the harvest and considerable other such work.”136 Upon the 1658 settlement of Harlem those enslaved to the WIC were responsible for the building of a wagon road between there and New Amsterdam.137 It is likely that this wagon road included parts of the Wickquasgek Trail and the future Broadway. At the time of Michaelius’ 1628 letter a number of Africans would have been in the colony already, and based on Stoffelsen’s testification it is almost certain that those Africans such as the 1625-26 cohort would have been involved in the constructions he
135 Jameson, Narratives of New Netherland, 135. 136 Van Laer, Arnold J.F., trans. New York Historical Manuscripts: Dutch. Vol. I, (Baltimore, MD: Genealogical Publishing, 1974), 112-113, hereafter cited as Van Laer, New York Historical Manuscripts: Dutch. Vol. I. 137 Goodfriend, “Burghers and Blacks,” 131. 88
discussed. Other scholars found that these individuals were also responsible for building the fence or “wall” for which Wall Street was named. The presence of enslaved Africans in building the road to Harlem in 1658 suggested that thirty years after the initial construction of Ft. Amsterdam they were still an essential presence in the colony’s labor force. The value they held to labor within the colony is perhaps why they could not be banished or jailed in a similar way that Europeans were punished for certain crimes. This could be seen in the 1641 murder of Jan Premero. This individual was of African descent and enslaved to the WIC as were those held trial for his murder, which occurred on the sixth of January. The names of those indicted were “little” Antonio, Paulo d’Angola, Gracia d’Angols, Jan of Fort Orange, Manuel of Gerrit de Reus, Anthony “the Portuguese”, Manuel Minuit, Simon Congo, and “big” Manuel. Based on the names it also appears that these men were also the very ones manumitted and became property holders in the land north of New Amsterdam proper just a few years later. On the seventeenth of January, a Thursday, all the men appeared in court at Ft. Amsterdam “without torture or shackles” where they “voluntarily declared and confessed that they jointly committed the murder.” Upon questioning it could not be determined who was the leader in the murder, or who had given the killing blow. The defendants all declared that they had all “committed the deed together,” and that “one is as guilty as the other.” It was due to this confession that the whole group was charged with committing manslaughter in the killing of Premero. It was then resolved by the court to have the defendants draw lots to determine the culprit who would be punishable by death. Manuel of Gerrit de Reus ended up receiving the lot, and was to be held in prison until his next court date. The following week on Thursday the 24th, this Manuel was condemned “to be punished by hanging until death follows, as an example to all such malefactors” under the direction of the governor and council of New Netherland. Manuel’s execution was to be carried out that same day, and he was placed atop a ladder with “two good ropes” around his neck. Once the ladder was pushed out from under him by the executioner, both ropes around Manuel’s neck broke and the crowd surrounding the gallows all called out for mercy. The governor and council after having considered “the request of the community,” pardoned Manuel and the rest of his 89
accomplices in the murder “on promise of good behavior and willing service.”138 With the loss of one individual enslaved to the WIC and responsible for public works, colonial authorities could hardly afford to lose another member of their core labor force. The incompetency of Minuit’s succeeding director-general Wouter van Twiller was briefly touched upon when discussing the work of Washington Irving. One of the largest critics of Van Twiller during his own time as head of the colony was Captain David Pietersz de Vries, whose work Irving most likely consulted before composing his Knickerbocker History. De Vries first arrived in New Amsterdam on an evening in April of 1633 and it was almost immediately that he began to experience trouble with Van Twiller. The director-general was previously a clerk in the West India House at Amsterdam, and he was also a nephew of Kiliaen van Rensselaer. Just a few days after De Vries’ arrival an English ship showed up with trader Jacob Eelkens aboard. Eelkens had previously been a commander at the precursor to Ft. Orange but was discharged for misconduct before the days of the West India Company. The incident that followed would be the first example of incompetence that De Vries would attribute to Van Twiller. De Vries expressed dissatisfaction that while the WIC saw people such as Eelkens as unfit, they still employed unfit individuals such as Van Twiller in positions of power. When discussion was underway with Eelkens, De Vries claimed that all had become intoxicated and that the English “could not understand how it was that there should be such unruliness among the officers of the Company, and that a governor should have no more control over them.” A few days after these intoxicating talks the English ship under Eelkens sailed up the Hudson to Ft. Orange. In response to this action De Vries told Van Twiller that he had “committed great folly” by allowing the English ship to pass. De Vries continued that if he had he been in charge he would send a ship up river to haul the English back out.139 Aside from the lack of leadership Van Twiller apparently held, this example is also one of many that display how the English faintly respected Dutch authority over the colony. Later during his first visit to the colony Van Twiller and De Vries would have issues again when the captain sought to leave New Amsterdam. The director-general
138 Van Laer, New York Historical Manuscripts: Dutch. Vol. IV, 97-100. 139 Jameson, Narratives of New Netherland, 186-188. 90
even took actions to prevent De Vries from leaving, which caused the captain to ask “whether the land was full of fools.” De Vries would again reiterate this statement as his departure continued to be postponed stating that “the company would send such fools into this country, who knew nothing, except to drink; that they could not come to be assistants in the East Indies; and that the Company, by such management, must come to naught. In the East Indies, no one was appointed governor, unless he had long service, and was fit for it.”140 Despite his distaste for what went on within the colony and its leadership, De Vries would eventually come to “purchase” land on Staten Island after learning that a colony he set up in Guiana had been broken up by the English and Spanish. De Vries sought to plant a his own colony on the island which caused more problems because the director-general contested it. Van Twiller protested against De Vries taking the entirety of Staten Island under his own name which caused the captain to seek permission elsewhere. In August of 1635 De Vries returned to the Netherlands to seek permission for this from the WIC directly.141 In writing a defense of Wouter Van Twiller, Jaap Jacobs argued that the director- general experienced “a prime example of miscarriage of historical justice.”142 Jacobs further explained that the works of De Vries and Irving had often went unchecked even in the contemporary era, which had allowed an incorrect image of Van Twiller to continue. Jacobs then went on to counter traits attributed to Van Twiller such as nepotism, fraud, alcoholism, and incompetence. While acknowledging the familial relationship between Van Twiller and Van Rensselaer, Jacobs stated that it was not unusual for a clerk to become a director of a small distant outpost during that time period of the West India Company. Jacobs even explored the possibility that De Vries’ attitude toward Van Twiller may have come out of his own desires to succeed Van Twiller as director-general. In terms of the April 1633 incident, Jacobs stated that one detail missing from De Vries’ account was that the Englishmen Eelkens was eventually arrested and his ship confiscated. Jacobs did not seek to amend accusations of alcohol
140 Jameson, Narratives of New Netherland, 191. 141 Ibid, 192-199. 142 Jaap Jacobs, "A Troubled Man: Director Wouter Van Twiller and the Affairs of New Netherland in 1635," New York History 85, no. 3 (2004), 213, hereafter cited as Jacobs, “A Troubled Man.” 91
use by Van Twiller but instead went on to explain it was quite common. Other officials also drank heavily, and it is no secret that this was especially true for all who were present in New Amsterdam. Even Dominie Bogardus was one character who found himself at the bottom of the bottle. New Netherland had very faintly been populated by the Dutch and other Europeans and life in a number of small outposts could get lonely. Thus while the twenty-seven year old Van Twiller may have found himself victim to claims of alcohol abuse in 1633, he was joined in this form of consumption by virtually every other European in the small outpost of New Amsterdam and likely the colony as a whole. Overall the failures of Van Twiller as head of the colony could be a representation of the WIC itself. Up until the years of Van Twiller the colony was already facing trouble and the worst of it wouldn’t even come until the succeeding administration.143 Under the direction of Van Twiller’s successor Willem Kieft the colony experienced perhaps its worst stagnation of growth. Because of a change in direction taken by the West India Company in the years 1638-1640 the colony should have seen an immediate increase in success, which it did briefly. The years that the colony was led by director-general Kieft were plagued by some of the worst violence New Netherland had seen in the colonies entire existence. Kieft’s time as a leader saw little good come to the colony, and as the head administrator he also granted a significant amount of land in the colony to the English of New England. Ultimately for his actions Kieft would be removed from his post and replaced by Peter Stuyvesant. It was under Stuyvesant that a WIC reform which should have aided New Netherland development under Kieft could truly be seen. This reform which occurred in 1638-1640 was the end the West India Company’s monopoly on the fur trade. The violence that occurred under Kieft ultimately deterred major business endeavors but Stuyvesant changed that. In addition, Kieft’s successor also embarked upon a number of reforms himself which would ultimately allow the colony to succeed further. The end of a West India Company monopoly on the fur trade in 1638-1640 meant that private citizens were granted approval to participate in that fur trade. If
143 Jacobs, “A Troubled Man.” 92
individuals thus chose to enter in such an enterprise they were required to pay a tax per beaver on all furs exported from New Netherland. This allowed the WIC to attract more settlers and investors in the troubled New Netherland colony. In the wake of this reform numerous travelers thus embarked to partake in the fur trade. According to Susanah Shaw Romney, travelers “shipped furs home to whatever family and kin remained in Europe.” To provide one example of this she cited a colonial document which stated that Jelle Evertsz “gave sixty-four beavers, two otters, and two squirrel skin jackets to a boatswain in Manhattan, asking the sailor to deliver them to his wife, Annetje Gerrits, when the ship reached home.”144 Shaw Romney’s work New Netherland Connections is littered with examples of individual situations and experiences faced by various peoples who traveled and held connections throughout the Dutch Atlantic world. She connected the end of a WIC monopoly on trade to a milestone in the expansion of New Netherland in her chapter “Amsterdam’s Intimate Atlantic,” and unlike other authors she closely studied the role of women from various walks of life played in such occurrences. Russell Shorto, in his Island at the Center of the World, also took note of the end of the West India Company’s monopoly. One argument he made was that the monopoly itself kept the colony “from developing in any areas except piracy and smuggling.” He continued that the WIC decision to end the monopoly turned New Amsterdam into a “hub through which traders’ and merchants’ ships would pass, where they would pay duties and be cleared for travel. The effect was electric.”145 The WIC decision basically made New Amsterdam a center of not just the fur trade but of the Dutch Atlantic as a whole. The capital at the colony’s center became a place where nearly every ship would stop either returning to or departing from the Netherlands. As touched upon, the true fruits of this reform couldn’t be seen until Stuyvesant was head of the colony. Indeed many individuals jumped right into the fur trade but during the 1640s New Netherland became plagued by violence due the measures and responses taken by Willem Kieft regarding Native Americans. Director-general Stuyvesant has something of a bad reputation in history, partially due to him being in charge when the colony fell to the English. Thanks to
144 Shaw Romney, New Netherland Connections, 50-51. 145 Shorto, Island at the Center of the World, 105. 93
writers like Washington Irving he became a man of legend known as “Peter the Headstrong.” One of the “few random, floating facts” Russell Shorto argued Irving reduced the colony to was that it was once ruled by an “ornery peg-legged governor.”146 In Shorto’s Island at the Center of the World, Stuyvesant became a figure who stood in the way of Adriaen van der Donk’s goal of shifting rule of New Netherland to the Dutch government directly. They became figures at odds with each other, and while Stuyvesant did stand in the way of any real form of state based government, he was devoted both to his job and the progression of the colony. While it can be speculated upon how the colony may have turned out had Van Der Donk succeeded in making New Netherland a colony run by the States-General, it simply did not happen. Just because Stuyvesant stood in the way of the colony developing in one direction does not mean he did not bring about many positive changes for all his faults. After the horrible job director-general Kieft did at managing the colony, it was left in shambles. According to Susanah Shaw Romney writing on his arrival to New Amsterdam, “Stuyvesant strove to insure the survival of the costly colony by reaffirming peace throughout the mid- Atlantic region.”147 He was largely successful, and over the next fifteen or so years New Netherland developed into the truly global capital which Shorto envisioned the colony to represent. Donna Merwick, in her work Stuyvesant Bound, sought to redeem the character of Stuyvesant who was so often attributed to the loss of the colony. It is true that under him significant losses came, such as the eastern half of Long Island being given over to the English as well as later the colony as a whole, but the West India Company played a principal role in that loss even more so than Stuyvesant due to their neglect. Stuyvesant was just a man attempting to do the best job he could in poor circumstances, and his position of deterrence was necessary in the wake of the colony’s violent past. With so much neglect from the WIC, deterrence was almost all Stuyvesant could do, yet in 1667 it was he whom the Company found guilty of neglect and dismissed. His true devotion to New Netherland could be found by the fact that he chose to live out the rest of his days under British rule on Manhattan. One of the greatest feats which occurred during the
146 Shorto, Island at the Center of the World, 3. 147 Shaw Romney, New Netherland Connections, 45. 94
Stuyvesant administration was the making of the capital New Amsterdam into a full- fledged city. In February 1653 New Amsterdam was incorporated into a city with the signing of its municipal charter. This date, February second, is still celebrated as the birthday of New York City by those within the contemporary New York City. According to Russell Shorto, it was this very the point when “Manhattan became Manhattan.”148
148 Shorto, Island at the Center of the World, 258, 265. 95
Chapter 6: Rowdiness, Religion, and Social Welfare
There was a distinct difference in the early years of New Netherland and in the mature years which existed under Stuyvesant’s term. Drunkenness and the altercations which occurred from drunkenness are present all throughout court records and colonial documents form the early New Netherland era. In addition there were constant actions taken to prohibit sale of alcohol and include extra taxes on such products. One of the earliest surviving court records from the colony included the May 1638 ordinance forbidding excessive drinking and the harboring of seamen on shore at night. In this document it was claimed that director-general Kieft and his council observed “much evil and mischief” that occurred on a daily basis due to “immoderate drinking.” It was also noted by Kieft that when he first arrived to the colony there was “nothing to be got but tobacco and beer.”149 To battle this it was made clear by the ordinance that wine could only be purchased and procured at the store, where the product would be issued in moderate quantities. It is no secret that seamen were a rowdy bunch, and the issue that forbid that harboring of sailors after dusk was obviously a measure against debauchery among other things such as smuggling.150 While alcohol is not explicitly stated in every altercation which occurred, the use and abuse of it certainly fitted the lifestyle so many of the individuals within the area chose to engage in. One example of business dealings done over alcohol use could be seen in a court regarding the sale of a house. In June of 1645, Rouloff Jansen brought a case against Jan Smeets who it was claimed purchased Jansen’s home for four hundred guilders. The purpose of the suit was to demand the payment be made on behalf of Smeets. It was in court that Smeets claimed he was intoxicated and had no recollection of the purchase. Jansen then provided two witnesses of the purchase, and Andries Hudden and Jacob Wolphersen were appointed referees in the matter to get parties to have an agreement.151 In this case the use of alcohol became an excuse for a bad purchase as well as a defense to get out of it. This trial over the purchase of a
149 Burrows and Wallace, Gotham, 33. 150 Van Laer, New York Historical Manuscripts: Dutch, Vol. IV, 9. 151 Ibid, 267. 96
home is just one example of a great many issues alcohol caused. Violence and sexual intercourse are also present throughout the records. In one council meeting in 1645, multiple stories were heard of a fight which broke out on the night before June 20. A twenty-three year old man from Schweinfurt named Andries Tummelyn claimed the fight began after he was called a name. His version of the story went that while standing sentry outside the home of Jan Damen on the main highway some people approached him as the sun was almost finished setting. He called out “who goes there,” to which the reply was “Jonker Rascal;” “Boor!” and “Bumpkin!” Following these words one of the group pointed their gun at him to which he responded by thrusting his half-pike at the assailant, causing the others to flee. Tummelyn recognized the approaching group as Paulus Heyman of Leyden, his wife Tryntjen Barents of Rotterdam, and Piere Malenfant of Brittany. Twenty-eight year old Liven Donck of Flanders claimed that it was dark and rainy on the said night, and while lying in bed at the house of Jan Damen he heard a slightly different interaction. Donk declared that after Tummelyn called out “who goes there?” someone answered “Joncker” and some other words he could not make out due to the wind. Upon hearing these words, he jumped out of bed, grabbed his cutlass, and ran out to see what was going on. When he got outside, Donk saw that Malenfant had been wounded by Tummelyn and had his own weapon drawn while Heyman had his gun in hand, and the women was crying loudly on the road to Ft. Amsterdam.152 Malenfant, who was thirty- five, claimed that at about nine at night he was heading away from a farm carrying a child with Heyman and his wife who was carrying the gun. After Tummelyn called “who goes there?” he responded “A friend,” and Heyman said “Good evening, Joncker Nobleman.” It was then claimed by Malenfant that upon hearing this Tummelyn replied “What do you want, Merchant?” to which Heyman said “Lick my a—e.” The sentry then stabbed Heyman’s arm and thigh. The twenty-six year old Heyman claimed that after Tummelyn’s initial words, Malenfant said “Good friend” and “Jonker” while he and Malenfant both then said “Noblemen” and he kept walking on ahead. He then claimed that he heard Malenfant and Tummelyn fighting. Heyman’s wife Barents, who was
152 Van Laer, New York Historical Manuscripts: Dutch, Vol. IV, 268-270. 97
twenty-nine, claimed that her husband said “Good evening, Noblemen” to Tummelyn’s initial inquiry. She then saw the sentry approaching and took her child from Malenfant’s arm. The latter then went toward the sentry and was wounded, following which they went to Ft. Amsterdam.153 That 1645 incident was hardly the first involving Jan Damen. His name actually appeared quite often in court documents, and not always for the most reputable reasons. One night in July of 1638, Jan Damen attempted to throw his stepdaughter Christina Vinge, wife of Dirck Holgersen the Norseman outdoors. The declaration of these events were told by Mourits Jansen van Broeckhuysen, a twenty year old assistant and cousin of Kiliaen van Rensselaer, and Pieter de May, aged twenty-four, on the twenty-second of that month. Both men claimed that Vinge was at her stepfather’s home when at one point he told her she “must go out of the house.” Vinge refused and then was pushed out of the home by Damen. Holgersen then came to defend his wife and was stabbed by Damen, causing the wounded man to respond by seizing a post and striking Jan Damen with it. Regarding the same assault Gerrit Schut, a surgeon, and Jan Pietersen declared at Holgersen’s request their own description of the events. In the second declaration it was claimed that Damen asked Holgersen for a payment of 30 guilders to which the latter replied that he did not own anything. Damen then told Holgersen to “begone out of the house!,” and continued to toss Vinge outdoors and struck her. Damen went on to draw his knife and thrust it at Vinge cutting the skirt she was wearing. In defense of his wife, Holgersen threw a pewter can at Damen but missed, which led the latter to then attack and stab Holgersen with the knife. To defend his own life, Holgersen then grabbed the post to use on Damen. Damen then went to beat on Vinge some more, took off her cap, then challenged Holgersen saying “if you have the courage, draw your knife.” It appeared that Holgersen was sober minded while Damen may have been drunk because it was stated that “Dirck, being sober, would not do so and only defended himself with a post.”154 Another incident regarding Jan Damen came when he alleged that Jan Platneus (“Jan Flat Nose”) was a perjurer and incompetent at giving any testimony in court
153 Van Laer, New York Historical Manuscripts: Dutch, Vol. IV, 268-70. 154 Ibid, 38-40. 98
“because he has committed adultery with an Indian women.”155 Interracial relations appeared to be an issue within the colony because in April of 1638 it was decreed that all settlers “must refrain” from “intercourse with heathens, blacks, or other persons.”156 This did not appear to stop those kinds of relations from occurring however. Another example occurred in April of 1639, during which seven individuals, two of whom were soldiers, testified against corporal Hans Steen who allegedly slept with a Native American women in a guardhouse and stole powder belonging to the WIC while on the ship De Liefde. The testimony of each individual is a bit variated in detail, but the previous statement pretty much sums up what had happened. Ultimately it was determined by the fiscal that the actions of Steen “demoralize the soldiers and might occasion disorder in the guardhouse,” due to which Hans Steen was condemned to “ride the wooden horse for three hours and to do guard duty as a private soldier for 14 days.” Many things could be said and analyzed regarding the actions of Steen, but what is particularly noteworthy for the sake of this discussion is the origin of those who testified against him. Balthasar Lourens was twenty-three and from a seaport in Schleswig (in Jutland, currently German domain), Hans Noorman was twenty and from a seaport town in Norway, Hans Fredrickx was twenty and from an inlet between Sweden and Norway, Remmer Jansen was twenty from Oldenburg in Germany, Jochem Beeckman was twenty-four from Stettin in Germany, Jan Andriesen was from the Dutch province of Gelderland, and no location of origin was stated for Gregoris. Based on these locations it can be determined that in Fort Amsterdam on the seventh of April in 1639, two men of the northlands, one from between Germany and the north, two Germans, one Dutchman of the inlands, and one man of an unknown origin all testified against corporal Hans Steen whom they either saw on De Liefde, in the guardhouse, or both.157 One of the most infamous couples to have lived in the colony were perhaps Anthony “the Turk” Jansen and his wife Grietjen Reyniers. Despite his name, which may have been used as a slur, Jansen was likely born in the Moroccan seaport town of
155 Van Laer, New York Historical Manuscripts: Dutch, Vol. IV, 122. 156 Ibid, 4. 157 Ibid, 43-45. 99
Salee. His father was most likely a Dutch privateer named Jan Jansen and his mother a Moroccan Muslim. At one point Jan Jansen apparently served as an admiral of a Sultan’s fleet. Anthony’s wife Grietjen was from Amsterdam where she served liquor as a barmaid at the tavern of Pieter de Winter. The role taverns and inns played in passage to New Netherland and the Dutch Atlantic was actually quite relevant. In Susanah Shaw Romney’s work New Netherland Connections she brought a very unique perspective on the subject. According to Shaw Romney, innkeepers and landladies held a significant financial importance in the household economy. One particular reason for this was due to the fact that a great number of men from throughout the Republic set sail from seaport cities such as Amsterdam and the inns there held a critical importance in keeping a mobile population available. It was in 1633 when Reyniers arrived in New Amsterdam on the Soulberg, the very same ship as Wouter van Twiller and Doninie Everardus Bogardus. Anthony Jansen arrived sometime between 1633 and 1638, the latter being the time in which he began appearing in the court records. By this time Anthony and Grietjen had already become married, started having children, and possessed a farm somewhere between Manhattan’s current Maiden Lane and Ann Street. This farm came to be known as Walestyn, and it was bordered by the properties of court messenger Philip de Truy and tailor Hendrick Jansen.158 The New Amsterdam communities perception of the couple was not well standing. In one of the earliest surviving court records a case of slander involving Jansen was brought up. In April of 1638 Anthony was called “a Turk, a rascal and horned beast” by his neighbor Hendrick.159 The following month it was ordered that Hendrick and Anthony were to live in peace as neighbors or face a fine of 25 guilders.160 The peace was not kept however, and various community members continued to have issues with Anthony and Grietjen. One suit which involved Anthony was between him and Dominie Bogardus in June of 1638, in which the minister claimed that “the Turk” owed him 319 guilders. While Jansen agreed to pay the price within three months, he
158 Leo Hershkowitz, “The Troublesome Turk: An Illustration of Judicial Processes in New Amsterdam,” New York History 46, no. 4 (1965), 299-301, hereafter cited as Hershkowitz, “The Troublesome Turk.” 159 Van Laer, New York Historical Manuscripts: Dutch, Vol. I, 11. 160 Van Laer, New York Historical Manuscripts: Dutch, Vol. IV, 6. 100
later took Bogardus to court claiming it was the minister who then owed him 74 guilders. Bogardus admitted to owing just seven guilders and the trial costs were given to Jansen to pay for. This decision outraged both Jansen and his wife, and Reyniers took to the streets telling all who would listen that the minister was a liar and in spite of his oaths was actually in debt to her. In response to this a number of townsfolk appeared in court that October to state that Reyniers was slandering the minister by making claims that he had taken false oaths. Jansen’s neighbor De Truy and Wolphert Gerritsen then testified that when attempting to collect the money owed to Bogardus, Jansen claimed he would rather lose his head than pay the money all at once. Jansen continued to state that if Bogardus insisted on having the money “it will yet cause bloodshed.” Then when Jansen insisted that Bogardus declare before the court that both him and Reyniers were honorable more attacks came against the couple. Midwife Lysbert Dircks then stated that when assisting Reyniers in childbirth she was asked by the birthing mother if the newborn resembled the former member of Van Twiller’s council Andries Hudden. The midwife replied to Reyniers that “if you do not know who the father is how should I know.” Despite this, Dircks did note that the newborn was “somewhat brown,” which may suggest Moroccan ancestry if he was indeed Jansen’s child.161 As the trial moved forward Jansen was then accused by Bogardus for slander, and the ministers claims were backed by nearly every member of the community all of whom attested to the egregious character of the Jansen family. Members of the community then began to variously call Reyniers a whore. Philip de Truy claimed that when Reyniers first arrived off the Soulberg he heard a number of the crew shouting “two pound’s butter whore” in response to which she exposed her behind to the crew. This story was backed up by schoolmaster Adam Roelensten who added that in exposing her behind Reyniers also smacked her backside. Master carpenters Egbert van Borsum and Gillis Pietersen van der Gou then claimed that they heard Reyniers say “I have long enough been a whore of the nobility, now I want to be the rabble’s whore.” This was a proclamation they claimed Reyniers made at Fort Amsterdam with two children present, to which she continued that “I shall take these
161 Hershkowitz, “The Troublesome Turk,” 301-302. 101
bastards right away and dash their brains out against the wall.” In response to all of these claims Anthony Jansen stated that the wife of Bogardus had herself lifted her skirt up in public. Further back and fourths were made regarding the slander between the two and against the Jansen’s characters. Ultimately it was ordered that Reyniers be made to ring the bell and make a public acknowledgment that the minister is honorable and that she made false claims. Reyniers was also ordered to pay for the costs of this lengthy trial. Anthony Jansen was fined twelve guilders, forbidden to carry any arms except a knife and an axe, and was required to refrain from offending Dominie Bogardus or face corporal punishment.162 While the issues between the Jansen family and Bogardus appeared to be settled following the trials, the rest of the community continued to have issues with both Anthony and Grietjen. Just barley over a week after the trials and punishments concluded Anthony Jansen was back in court for allegedly stealing Philip de Truy’s chopped wood, a charge he denied. In another trial for slander which Wybrant Pietersen brought against Anthony Jansen, the defendant presented a deposition by Jacobus van Curler in which Van Curler recounted an incident where Pietersen called Grietjen a “whore” and Jansen a “rascal”. In response to this Pietersen called in Cornelis Lambertsen to testify that he had seen Reyniers years earlier attending to some sailors in a private room at the tavern of Pieter de Winter in Amsterdam where she worked. He continued to state that De Winter’s wife who having peeked into the room claimed that while she initially thought she had “an honest women” in her house, she had then come to believe Reyniers was a “nasty whore.” It was then claimed that the tavern keeper’s wife threatened to have Reyniers thrown out the very next day. The testimony brought in by Pietersen must have been worked in his favor no matter how irrelevant it was because Anthony Jansen lost the case. In another instance when Philip de Truy attempted to collect a fee from Reyniers after delivering her a summons the two exchanged a few words. Reyniers claimed that De Truy had been paid and that if he said otherwise he was a liar, and the court messenger then said that Grietjen was a whore if he be convicted a liar. Responding to De Truy’s statement both Grietjen and Anthony Jansen
162 Hershkowitz, “The Troublesome Turk,” 302-303. 102
called Philip a villain and his wife a whore. Following this exchange of words it was suggested that Reyniers was drunk, but Reyniers replied that she was not drunk and that De Truy could have his money when he came to their home.163 On April seventh of 1639, it was proposed by the fiscal that Anthony Jansen be banished along with his wife Grietjen Reyniers from the jurisdiction of New Netherland “in as much as the good inhabitants daily experience much trouble from him and his wife.” That same day various suits were brought against both Anthony and Grietjen by various members of New Amsterdam’s community. Prior to his exile Jansen was able to sell his farm to Barnet Dirksen. Two months before he was to be banished Jansen petitioned director-general Kieft for permission to buy a parcel of land on the bay of the Hudson River so he would continue to be able to support himself, his wife, and his children. In response to this Kieft granted the Jansen family a two hundred acre tract of land on Long Island and Coney Island, presumably around where the Brooklyn neighborhoods Gravesend and Sheepshead Bay exist today. For this deal to go through Jansen agreed to pay the WIC one hundred guilders annually for a ten-year period. The Jansen family thus at this time became one of the earliest non-indigenous families to live in this part of Long Island and the future borough of Brooklyn. As early as 1643 Anthony Jansen appeared to have been successful at acquiring a Bridge Street property in New Amsterdam. Following this purchase Jansen established himself as a money lender and faced little opposition. The four daughters of Anthony Jansen and Grietjen Reyniers all appeared to have married New Amsterdam farmers. Grietjen passed away around 1669 and it was also around the time following her death that Anthony married a widow named Metje Grevenraet. Anthony died in 1676, and his second wife continued to live in the house they held on Bridge Street.164 While the lives of Anthony Jansen of Salee and his wife Grietjen Reyniers of Amsterdam appeared to be scandalous, this is not to say it was unique to the colony or New Amsterdam especially. Leo Hershkowitz in his “The Troublesome Turk” detailed the court trials dealing with Jansen and offered a worthy defense. Of the ninety three cases heard by the court between 1638 and 1639 the Jansen family appeared in just
163 Hershkowitz, “The Troublesome Turk.” 304. 164 Ibid, 306-308. 103
fifteen of them. It is no secret that Jansen had an origin of a mixed ethnicity, could possibly have been raised a Muslim, may have appeared as an outsider to the northern and western Europeans that existed in the small outpost of New Amsterdam, and was married to a woman known for promiscuity in a time when Calvinism was practically a national religion by the colonial authorities. For all the differences this couple may have had however, they were in no way separated from the rest of the frontier’s rowdy bunch. Hershkowitz noted that as the neighbor of Jansen, Philip de Truy, may have had ulterior motives for filing complaints against “the Turk.” It was also noted that the schoolmaster Adam Roelantsen who testified against Jansen was also apparently a town drunk. WIC employees Hans Schipper and Jochem Beekman who testified against Jansen were also at one point found guilty of thefts.165 It was during this era that the colony also saw the introduction of its first Italian resident. The New York Metropolitan area today has the largest population of Italians and Italian-Americans in the country. It only seems fitting that the earliest Italian to have resided in North America did so on Manhattan also. Cesare Pietro Alberto (or Alberti) was a Venetian who sailed under Captain David de Vries until things went a bit sour. It was through this connection to De Vries which led him to take up a residence within New Netherland. In January of 1638, at Ft. Amsterdam, the forty year old Jacob Walingen appeared before the secretary of New Netherland at Cesare’s (“Cicero Piere”) request. This appearance was to declare that he and the Venetian had in 1635 indeed served under “skipper David Pieterssen [de Vries] from Hoorn as sailors” and that De Vries “threatened to put the said Cicero Piere ashore at Cayenne and also in Virginia.” While Walingen did not personally hear this, it appeared to be common talk between the crew of De Vries’ ship De Coninck David.166 Almost exactly one year later De Vries was ordered to pay Alberto 10 guilders as a present.167 This occurred during the weeks of January 1639, when both Cesare Pietro and David de Vries took each other to court at Ft. Amsterdam. De Vries continued to maintain Alberto “ran away as a rascal” from his
165 Hershkowitz, “The Troublesome Turk,” 307-308. 166 Van Laer, New York Historical Manuscripts: Dutch, Vol. I, 89. 167 Van Laer, New York Historical Manuscripts: Dutch, Vol. IV, 37. 104
ship.168 Cesare Alberto came up again in court documents in December 1643, where he filed suit against Tonias Nyssen to receive the 180 guilders he was allegedly owed. In the latter case Alberto was listed as being called “Piere the Italian.”169 The Venetian Cesare chose to make New Amsterdam his home, thus becoming one of if not the first Italian-Americans in the region. Cesare made himself a member of the European community there and in doing so he chose to take a Dutch wife named Judith Jans Manje. Both individuals had very different stories and Manje came to the colony with her Dutch parents from Amsterdam a few years earlier. Cesare and Judith married in 1642 and ended up having seven children. All were baptized in the colony, but one of the offspring was unable to survive past infancy. Because Cesare had no blood ties or relatives in the Dutch colony him and his wife were aided by the orphan masters in selecting godparents for their children at baptism. In total for all seven children, twenty-seven individuals appear to have stood in as godparents at the baptisms. Unfortunately for the six children who survived their initial years on this earth, both parents were killed in 1655 from warfare on the frontier. The oldest of these six children couldn’t have been more than about thirteen and the youngest around one.170 Throughout these early years life within the colony appeared to be tumultuous. While court records prior to the Kieft administration did not survive it could be assumed based on other documents that they were just as rowdy. While at this point the population remained stagnant, there were still a diverse group of individuals living within the colony. During both the Van Twiller and Kieft governments the number of English increased dramatically. Various groups of Scandinavians, Germans, French, and other Europeans all existed within the colony including the Italian Cesare and Moroccan Jansen. By the 1630s a number of the initial Walloon settlers began heading back to Europe due to a lack of prospects and rough life. It was not until various reforms came both from the West India Company and within the colony itself that things would appear to change dramatically for the better. One institution which existed from the initial years
168 Van Laer, New York Historical Manuscripts: Dutch, Vol. IV, 35-37. 169 Ibid, 210. 170 Susanah Shaw Romney, "Intimate Networks and Children's Survival in New Netherland in the Seventeenth Century," Early American Studies 7, no. 2 (2009), 80-84, hereafter cited as Shaw Romney, “Intimate Networks and Children's Survival.” 105
of settlement which was built up as the colony became more sustainable included that of the church. Although religion did not appear to be something that fit right into place within areas where debauchery, violence, and promiscuity seemed so prominent, Christianity was a central aspect of life in the Dutch sphere of influence. While Dominie Michaelius was the first official priest to arrive in 1628, Brother Sebastian Krol came in 1626 on Manhattan as a “comforter of the sick.” Shortly after his arrival however, he went up to Ft. Orange to serve as a chief WIC Agent.171 When Michaelius arrived he did so with his wife, two daughters, and one son Jan. Seven weeks after their arrival Michaelius’ wife of over sixteen years died which left him alone to take care of their children. He believed that this death was caused by the Lord, which while he was then discomforted, he could not allow himself to fail in his duties and service. This perhaps may be one of the reasons the minister chose to indulge in alcohol. In describing life on the journey to the colony, Michaelius wrote that there was such little room that he and his family had a “worse lot than the sailors,” and overall their fare in the ship was “poor and scanty.” He described the ship’s cook as a “wicked” man who annoyed Michaelius and his family “in every way.” The minister had similar problems with the captain of the ship Evert Croeger, whom according to Michaelius “kept himself constantly to the wine, both at sea and especially here while lying in the river.” Michaelius was further bothered by the fact that this captain never came ashore to attend religious services, and seldom to the Council. In response to the captain’s behavior, Michaelius wrote to a Company director to make the actions of Captain Croeger known.172 Dominie Michaelius found that most of the residents of New Amsterdam treated him with love and respect, but he also wrote that they were “rather rough and unrestrained.” Michelius resolved to choose two elders to act as his assistants in ecclesiastical matters. Director-general Minuit was selected as the first ecclesiastical assistant, a position the colony’s director-general was to hold into the final days of Stuyvesant. The second assistant was Jan Huygen who was a Company storekeeper and had previously served the church. When the first official administration of the Lord’s
171 Jameson, Narratives of New Netherland, 124. 172 Ibid, 122-124, 127. 106
Supper was held, fifty colonists of Dutch and Walloon origin participated in worship. There were also a percentage of French individuals Michaelius later made note of. Some of those worshiping individuals made their first confessions while others brandished their church certificates. According to Michaelius, some did not believe a church would be established in the colony and did not bring any church documents with them. 173 The Lord’s Supper was then to be administered once every four months following the initial service, unless additional were to be necessary. While the French were themselves at this time in a small number, Michaelius did note that they did have the ability to administer the Lord’s Supper in their own language and customs. In order to do this correctly, the Dominie had the French language sermon in writing as his French wasn’t well enough to give a sermon spontaneously. While the director-general, Huygen, and his succeeding assistants were to act in the service of the church, Michaelius still sought to keep religious and civil matters separate. Despite his desire to keep both matters unmixed, the Dominie still felt that he should serve the director- general and his council so long as he wasn’t a busy-body or meddler in the matters of others. The reverend did indeed employ advice to matters within the council as did his successors in the colony. He did not make his opinions secret and wrote down what he felt should be done within the colony. Michaelius felt the Company directors should furnish New Netherland with more precise instructions. In terms of religious matters, he felt that the colony should in the future have all such Acta Synodalia adopted by the synods of Holland.174 In order to convert indigenous groups within the colony Michelius proposed they should work exclusively with indigenous children as adult ideas and beliefs were already well established. In order to do this he suggested that children “ought to be separated” not just “from their parents” but “from their whole nation.” The process spoken of by Michaelius here was not unique, as it was practiced as a part of the evangelization process throughout the Americas by various groups of Europeans. Types of converting indigenous youths to a European based religion and culture was even carried over into
173 Jameson, Narratives of New Netherland, 124-126. 174 Ibid. 107
the age of United States expansion into the North American west during the nineteenth century. Despite acknowledging the inhumane aspects of this by saying “parents have a strong affection for their children, and are very loth to part with them,” Michealius still thought separation was a sound way to promote evangelization among youths. To undergo this process he called for an “experienced and godly schoolmaster” to instruct children to “speak, read, and write in our language” as well as “the fundamentals of our Christian religion.” It was the hopes of Michaelius to “keep a watchful eye over these people, and learn as much as possible of their language, and to seek better opportunities for their instruction than hitherto it has been possible to find.”175 In terms of indigenous groups of New Netherland however, this was not a significant process the Dutch ultimately chose to embark upon. Being a widowed father with three children, Dominie Michealius acknowledged he would need help caring for his children in this strange new and sparsely populated place. He noted that maid servants from his own country were “not here to be had,” and exhibited his prejudice against Africans through statements such as claiming “the Angola slave women are thievish, lazy, and useless trash.” He claimed that he was promised ample land to sustain himself and his family, but complained that it was “void and useless.” He wrote that he and everyone else within New Amsterdam “wants more.” The refreshments of butter and milk were said by Michaeilus to not yet be available despite the Company directors promising them to him. Along with other necessities he complained that ships did not bring them to the island, and expressed concern that he would be forced to go through the winter without those items. He called the food available in the colony “hard” and “stale,” “not very good,” expensive, and stated that “one cannot obtain as much as he desires.” While “the summer yields something,” the reverend still complained that it was not enough. When natives came to trade he stated that it meant little unless one had wampum, wares, knives, or beads to use as items of trade. Because of the difficulties Michaelius felt he faced, he wrote that he “ordered from Holland almost all necessities.” He further stated that if things in the colony didn’t change, he would continue to be “compelled to order everything from the Fatherland as
175 Jameson, Narratives of New Netherland, 127-129. 108
great expense and with much risk and trouble, or else live here upon these poor and hard rations alone, it will badly suit me and my children.”176 Based on his description it is evident that Michaelius had much trouble fairing as a single father in the early years before New Netherland’s significant development. He was the first official minister to the area and much regarding the church and community welfare associated with it still had to be developed. Social aids did develop in New Amsterdam along with the church as more people and things came over from the Netherlands. Relief for the poor and unfortunate was a one form of the social safety nets which came to exist aside the Dutch Reformed Church in the colony. In Irmgard Carras’ study “Who Cared? The Poor in 17th Century New Amsterdam 1628-1664” she detailed the development of poor relief in the Netherlands and the arrival of and function it held in New Amsterdam. While today social service programs and public relief systems are used to aid the poor and homeless, Carras pointed out that this was hardly a new concept for New York or the rest of the globe. The earliest forms of public aid that existed on Manhattan originated in the Catholic Netherlands prior to the sixteenth century and development of Dutch Calvinism. According to Carras, Dutch Catholics looked at neglecting the poor as a “heinous sin” and began to administer charities jointly through the Church and civil authorities to create almshouses for the poor, sick, elderly, and orphaned children. When the Dutch Reformed Church organized and became predominant in the new Dutch Republic, they too became involved in providing relief for the poor and worse off. Relief was provided by the two religious sects until 1634 when authorities began to exclude Catholics from administering relief. The community within the Reformed Church elected who was to administer this relief, but private individuals also participated in these kinds of acts which included the distribution of bread. Edicts that passed in 1595 required able-bodied beggars to seek employment in the town upon which they came or face forced eviction from that town. These individuals were allowed to seek employment in specific cities if they could not find work where they were currently living. In 1619 other edicts were decreed that signed certificates had to be possessed by the
176 Jameson, Narratives of New Netherland, 129-131. 109
poor which included their name, birthplace, their destination, and a listing of their previous aid. In addition to these reequipments, ministers of the Reformed Church were allowed to run almshouses and distribute alms to the poor whom they viewed as deserving. Poor relief at this time was funded by things such as taxes on beer and other commodities, lotteries, and church collection boxes. While these kinds of poor relief programs made their way into the New Netherland colony early on, they did not begin right away as partially seen through the writings of Michaelius.177 Further describing life in the early settlement Michaelius wrote that most of the New Amsterdam’s 270 settlers were living “huddled” in “hovels and holes,” and could not “obtain proper sustenance for want of bread and other necessaries.” Michaelius was successful in solidifying connections between the church and state early on by choosing director general Minuet and Jan Huygen as elders of the Reformed Church in New Netherland. Records of official poor relief began to appear a decade later in the 1638 municipal records. Examples of funding for relief could be seen in the arrest of Grietje Reiners where she was required to pay directly into the poor fund following her slander of Dominie Bogardus mentioned earlier. Examples also existed in situations such as a decree which called for “a fine of 10 guilders for the poor” to be paid if bad wampum was used. In 1659 an ordinance was renewed for specifications for bread to be baked and sold, and it was decreed that no one could bake or bartend without permission of the government. If these ordinances were violated, one-third of the fines were to be distributed to the church or poor.178 These relief funds did not go without complaints however. When funds for the poor began to decrease following 1639, residents petitioned the States General with a variety of complaints. These included that the church was lacking property and revenue, provisions weren’t being made for the poor, asylums for the elderly and orphans were lacking, and director general Kieft was borrowing poor relief money without interest. Ordinances passed in 1642 and 1643 made the harboring
177 Irmgard Carras, "Who Cared? The Poor in 17th Century New Amsterdam 1628–1664," New York History 85, no. 3 (2004), 247-252, hereafter cited as Carras, "Who Cared? The Poor in 17th Century New Amsterdam 1628–1664." 178 Ibid, 248-254. 110
of strangers for more than one night without notifying authorities forbidden, which partially came from a fear that individuals from other locations would strain the local parish. Kieft’s war against the natives of the colony further exacerbated the populace causing the percentage of impoverished individuals to skyrocket. When Stuyvesant took over Kieft’s position he was faced with a large number of people dependent on charity. A March 1648 complaint by local elders and church officials linked the current poverty situation to alcohol abuse, and some began to protest that tappers were encouraging New Amsterdam residents to pawn their goods for drink. Stuyvesant and his council then passed an ordinance in response to this which denied individuals from opening new taverns without first gaining consent. In addition, tapping was also banned on Sundays. In 1651 Deacon Jeurian Fradell put together a farm for the poor in what is today Steinway, Queens. Following 1655, qualifications were put into effect for aid which required that only members of the church could receive relief aid. In New Netherland a small circle controlled all aspects of poor relief as well as the constructions of churches and schools. Orphan masters were selected from a list provided by the local burgomasters and in New Amsterdam poor relief was primarily provided by taxes.179 The first official Orphan Chamber was put together in 1656 to resemble those that existed in the Netherlands, and it was the only such institution to have existed during that time in North America. By 1656 orphan chambers had already been a two century old institution. Despite the wide variety of ethnicities in New Amsterdam the establishment of such an institution made the outpost on Manhattan resemble the Dutch Republic a bit more than previously. The Orphan Chamber may have been organized at the time it was due to the growth in population it had been experiencing. Just a few years earlier a new form of municipal government was organized to better handle the occurrences within the settlement and colony. Because the colony lacked formal financial institutions, the chamber in New Amsterdam was to provide resources to religious and municipal endeavors in the need. The head of this institution, like those in patria, was the orphan master who held not only control over orphans and minors but
179 Carras, “Who Cared? The Poor in 17th Century New Amsterdam 1628–1664,” 255-263. 111
also roles in civil law. With the role of burghers increasingly becoming an established presence in the colony, burgomasters held the ability to nominate officials to religious and municipal positions. The first two orphan masters were appointed by Pieter Wolfertsen van Couwenhoven and Pieter Cornelissen van der Veen, both of whom were expected to act only through the direction of the burgomasters. While this institution did not last long following the English seizure of the colony, between its foundation and 1668 eleven men in total served as orphan masters. These men all consisted of the colony’s most elite such as Govert Loockermans and Oloff Stevens van Cortlandt.180 Interestingly, orphan masters held the ability for forbid any marriages until participating widowers and prospective partners settled matters of a child’s inheritance beforehand. The reason behind this was that prior to any remarriages the estate matters had to be divided and settled by law. Orphan masters were required to ensure that an orphan’s inheritance wasn’t put in jeopardy. Orphan masters also appointed guardians and executed wills, and some deceased individuals used their wills to bar those orphan masters from meddling with their estate. Following the death of individuals with children an inventory of immovable and movable property was made up, and items such as furniture were auctioned off so the proceeds could go to the orphan child or children. Orphan masters also handled all matters related to the inheritance allotted to the orphan from other deceased relatives. In instances where creditors held complaints or claims on the inheritance of an orphan they were required to go through such orphan masters. When the inheritance of an orphan was not enough to cover their living expenses orphan masters would shift the charges over to the Reformed Church. In order to keep track of a child’s inheritance from relatives back in the Netherlands orphan masters were also engaged in contacts with the Orphan Chamber of Amsterdam. As the English took over the colony following 1664 the role of the Orphan Chamber dramatically decreased to a point where it would eventually cease. In the years that followed matters relating to orphans and inheritance then became those which were handled by the court of New York.181 In total about one hundred and fifty children appeared in the orphan
180 Adriana E. van Zwieten, "The Orphan Chamber of New Amsterdam," The William and Mary Quarterly 53, no. 2 (1996), 319-40, hereafter cited as Van Zwieten, “The Orphan Chamber of New Amsterdam.” 181 Ibid, 319-40. 112
records during the years of the chambers existence and one hundred and forty-four individuals were listed as guardians.182 When looking at the lives of the actual children who had to survive with the loss of their parents, Susanah Shaw Romney found that some individuals fared much better than others with the help of both civic and religious authorities. In the case of Jan, son of Gerritsz van Hardwijk, maintaining an inheritance was difficult due to his inability to work. This inability also affected the willingness of others to act as the guardian of Jan. Initially Jan was placed in the care of his stepmother, but she separated from her deceased husbands family soon after. When placed in the care of the orphan masters, those new guardians were to find somewhere for Jan “as soon as possible.” In order to encourage individuals to take in the disabled Jan it was deemed that they would be compensated in his inheritance. Upon the inheritance running out Jan was to be placed in the care of the church as a recipient of charity. The story of Jan was very different than that of his two siblings. Jan’s brother was able to earn his own living through labor as well as his sister who was “hired out.” While Jan did receive more of the inheritance than his siblings from their deceased parents due to his disability, it proved to be ineffective in aiding him in making it through life in ease.183 This showed that institutions such as Orphan Chambers did not always work in the favor of the individuals they were meant to serve. Jan was still Dutch, but because his disability cost him the ability to make a living for himself he was forced to become essentially a ward of the state. The building up of the Dutch Reformed Church and welfare relief programs was one which was connected to the various reforms which existed within the colony. Similarly to the community itself, the church developed from something with little more than a single alcoholic preacher to a full-fledged institution with poor relief and maintained contacts with authorities in Amsterdam. For all the trouble it caused alcohol actually appeared to be of some benefit to the community as some of the taxes and proceeds of its sale went directly into social programs. As the colony and institutions within it grew so too did the individuals which came to build their lives there. While initially a disconnected group of outposts filled with refugees, merchant-traders,
182 Shaw Romney, “Intimate Networks and Children's Survival,” 280-281. 183 Ibid, 287-288. 113
individuals from the outskirts of society, and those which traversed the Atlantic world, towards the mature years of the colony all sorts of classes from the Netherlands began to build lives in New Netherland. Toward the end of the Dutch era the principal members of society were Dutch and English, but there still existed a multicultural makeup which included people from throughout the globe. Ashkenazi and Sephardic Jews, Africans from throughout the Atlantic world, French Protestants, Scandinavians, Germans, Flemish, Walloons, and many more ethnicities all existed throughout the colony whether it be in the initial years, its maturation, or throughout both. While indigenous individuals were being pushed to the boundaries of society, they still played crucial roles in aiding the Europeans in their development. To even exist in this new type of environment various ethnicities had to come together and work together. In doing this very different worlds collided and blended certain elements to make an American existence sustainable.
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Chapter 7: Blending Continents and Cultures
Various elements of life in New Netherland existed as ones which developed through a multicultural blending. So many aspects could be explored some of which include food, language, clothing, and currency. The fur trade is an obvious example. American furs were such a valuable commodity to Europeans that it was a principal element that brought many to set up shop upon North American shores. For the Dutch especially, fur was a huge commodity and central interest in trade within New Netherland. With the introduction of the fur trade to the area surrounding New Netherland the course of Native American lives were changed exponentially. Indigenous individuals used furs as a means of survival while for Europeans it was part of a domestic and international market which had huge profits. In 1626, New Netherland secretary Isaack de Rasieres estimated that at least ten thousand fur pelts had been exported from the colony.184 Outposts for the exportation of fur were first set up just two years earlier by agents of West India Company in 1624.185 The first group of furs were sent from Ft. Orange (then Ft. Nassau) to New Amsterdam, where many smaller boats then piled along its shores carrying a number of items to trade for those furs and take back to Europe.186 The use of American furs for European clothing created an atmosphere for global products long before the idea of such a thing existed. For Europeans to be able to gain those furs in such great numbers early in their contact required establishing relations with indigenous individuals skilled in acquiring those furs. To do so required diplomatic negotiations as well as processes which ultimately shifted both parties ways of life in the area. Native Americans adopted European elements into their own culture and practices and Europeans did the same with Native American elements. Trading between goods was one of the most essential means of acquiring furs by Europeans from indigenous individuals. According to Adriaen van der Donk, it hard to believe that the native people he encountered held no “desire for the costly metals”
184 Meuwese, “The Dutch Connection,” 306. 185 Cantwell and DiZerega Wall, "Landscapes and Other Objects,” 318. 186 Ibid, 320. 115
such as coins, gold, and silver.187 It is true that the people indigenous to New Netherland did not have a currency in the kind of ways in which Europeans had for centuries, but there was one particular set of items used by Native Americans which caught the eye of Europeans. These sets of items were strings of shell beads which were of great value to various indigenous cultures, and the business seeking Europeans learned that they could use these shells to their advantage. In English this product came to be called “wampum” and by the Dutch it was referred to as “zeewan.” By the mid- 1620s wampum was already developing into the main medium of currency for purchases of fur. One of the first Dutch mentions of trade in wampum came in 1622 when one trader exchanged a Native American hostage for “140 fathoms of Zeewan, which consists of small beads they manufacture for themselves, and which they prize as jewels.”188 In 1626 the product could be seen as one used to cement an alliance between the Dutch and Pequot, with the latter becoming the most consistent supplier of wampum to the Dutch during those early years. It can thus be seen that a European use of wampum was already affecting indigenous geopolitics as this alliance would be used by the Pequot to further expand their own influence throughout the region. One example of this could be seen where the Pequot used their growing authority to demand tributes of wampum from other indigenous peoples such as those across the Sound on Long Island.189 Wampum was sacred to a variety of individuals both of the coastal regions and further inland. The sacredness of wampum among the inland peoples whom Europeans traded with for fur could be seen in the very founding of the Haudenosaunee. It was believed that Hiawatha discovered shells in the bottom of a lake and used them to serve as a physical reminder of the Great Law. These beads were used to act as a summons to council, sending and relaying messages, solidifying agreements, condoling loss, sealing agreements, jewelry, and for a variety of other means.190 Learning of this value
187 Adriaen Van der Donk, “Of their Money or Circulating Medium,” Description of the New Netherlands, Translated by Jeremiah Johnson, (New York, NY: Cosimo Classics, 1655). 188 James W. Bradley, "Re-visiting Wampum and Other Seventeenth-Century Shell Games," Archaeology of Eastern North America 39 (2011), 33, hereafter cited as Bradley, "Re-visiting Wampum.” 189 Meuwese, “The Dutch Connection,” 308-309. 190 Bradley, "Re-visiting Wampum,” 27. 116
would certainly have been a reason Europeans took such a great interest in wampum production. Upon Dutch arrival to New Netherland there underwent an explosion in wampum production. The wampum produced from the quahog and whelk shells in the coastal shores of New Netherland were used by the Dutch to trade with a variety of Native Americans in the interior. According to Peter Stuyvesant, wampum was “the source and mother of the fur trade.”191 James W. Bradley laid out four factors that converged to rapidly make wampum the primary medium of exchange throughout the northeast. The first came from the long and valuable cultural tradition of making marine shell beads among Native Americans throughout eastern North America. The second was the introduction of glass beads by the French in the early seventeenth century and the expansion of these beads throughout the region. Third was the entrepreneurial qualities of both native peoples around the Long Island Sound who could make comparable beads from local shells, and of the Dutch traders who encouraged them to make that wampum by providing tools and a ready market inland. The fourth factor came out of the disruption of traditional sources of shell beads through events which were occurring throughout the Chesapeake region during this critical time. While shells to make wampum existed around New Netherland’s coastal region, it is possible that prior to a European arrival much of it came to the region through trade with Algonquian speaking peoples of the middle and southern regions of the east coast. Bradley argued that wampum was a “prime example of how two very different cultures learned to communicate through a material culture form. This was not just a matter of economics but a way to show respect, negotiate and seal agreements, and perform all those activities that allowed people from very different cultures to deal with one another.”192 Returning to the fourth factor which played in the rise of Dutch-Native American allied wampum production, it displayed how actions of the English even in Virginia still affected processes which occurred in New Netherland. Based on archeological evidence it is likely that wampum was produced only on a small scale locally in areas such as the Long Island Sound. In order to create the product stone tools had to be
191 Cantwell and DiZerega Wall, "Landscapes and Other Objects,” 331. 192 Bradley, "Re-visiting Wampum,” 34. 117
used and it was a time consuming process. As stated, there had been evidence found which suggested that the vast majority of wampum came from around the Chesapeake and mid-Atlantic region prior to European contact. Those regions were apparently in relatively frequent contact among Algonquian sites up and down the coast. The British settlement of Jamestown caused a number of disruptions among the native individuals there, which may be a significant reason why shell beads from that area appeared to have stopped making their way to the northeast.193 Wampum production did not occur on a mass scale or through systematic means until Europeans arrived. With that European arrival the very meaning and significance of the product began to shift as well, and the rate of production increased dramatically. Through Dutch influence, Algonquian speaking peoples began using tools such as European awls (“muxes”) for a more mass produced product. The production increased so much by 1636 that during that year alone close to two million wampum beads were traded to Europeans by costal Algonquian peoples. While prior to contact these beads were faintly seen at sites around the New Netherland interior, after its use as a European trading currency wampum could be found all throughout many inland places such as Iroquoia. To exemplify this, Anne- Marie Cantwell and Diana diZerga Wall noted that at the Seneca archeological site of Power House more than a quarter million of these beads were uncovered. A number of other sites with similar finds were also discussed in their study. While the beads are not found predominantly at coastal Algonquian sites, the debris of wampum production was plentiful at manufacturing sites such as Long Island’s Fort Massapeag and Fort Corchaug, Brooklyn’s Ryders Pong, and the Bronx’s Castle Hill, Clason Point, and Throgs Neck sites. Archeological sites of wampum manufacturing from before European contact displayed only a small amount of stone-drilled disc-shape beads.194 Fort Massapeag was possibly a fort constructed as a result of a deal made between Long Island Massapequa sachem Tackapausha for peace. At that fort a number of trade goods were found including European pipes and ceramics, as well as the remains of
193 Bradley, "Re-visiting Wampum,” 30, 32. 194 Cantwell and DiZerega Wall, “Landscapes and Other Object,” 332. 118
wampum manufacturing.195 The existence of European items at that particular indigenous wampum manufacturing site displayed the kinds of objects which were used between both cultures in mercantile activities. By 1660 wampum was starting to become overproduced which led to the devaluation of it as currency. This devaluation of wampum began to cause certain elements of fiscal issues in the Dutch colony. It was during that year which Stuyvesant complained to the West India Company that of wampum “we have none in our country.” One response to this crisis was the importation of shells. Between the years of 1659 and 1665 there were at least three orders for barrels of conch shells to be shipped to New Netherland from Curacao. Two of those orders came directly from Stuyvesant. Conch shells provided the raw material to make various forms of wampum that was desired throughout the region, every part of which could be utilized for production. Remains of conch made wampum began to appear in the mid-seventeenth century at Iroquois and Susquehannock sites, but aren’t well described until the following century.196 At this point though, for some indigenous groups, the significance of wampum actually increased as continued expansion and trade brought the marine shell beads further west. Wampum production quickly turned into a business by the eighteenth century, and its production came to be dominated by Europeans in the area around the New York bay for more than the following hundred years. One center of this production came to be in Bergen, New Jersey, where European farm women appeared to be making wampum since the settlements “very earliest times.” It was understood as the years progressed that their production of wampum would be “sold to the Indian traders of the far west.” Of the Bergen wampum producers, the Campbell family came to dominate the industry. This family purchased marine shells which were collected and sold at New York City markets and then sold the shells to local Bergen women to be crafted into beads. In 1842 the Campbell family developed a better drilling machine than previously used, and continued to produce wampum until the 1880s when their production ceased.197
195 Cantwell and DiZerega Wall, “Landscapes and Other Object,” 338. 196 Bradley, "Re-visiting Wampum,” 37, 40. 197 Ibid, 36. 119
The evolution and development of wampum as a medium for cross-cultural interactions within the seventeenth century was a central example of merging hemispheres of influence, and it happened early on. This was argued by a number of authors including all previously mentioned. Wampum was a shared good with significant meetings to both European-American and indigenous societies. The value of this product switched as it passed from culture to culture which allowed each to adapt to one another as a new social landscape was being created to which they both contributed.198 The order for shells made by Stuyvesant to be delivered for wampum production provided one example of how through the Dutch local commodities such as wampum entered a more globalized mode of production connecting various locations i.e. the Caribbean. Wampum, indigenous life, European-American life, European life in patria, and the fur trade all went hand in hand. Wampum was transformed by Europeans with that transformation being an extension of a European need for mediums of exchange to gain valuable furs they could market to Europe. By providing coastal indigenous peoples with the tools to make wampum on a mass scale Europeans were able to bring wampum to inland peoples, which was sacred to them, in much larger quantities and in return Europeans such as the Dutch gained significant amounts of furs and influence. It was through interactions such as these which allowed what came to be referred to as Delaware pidgin to develop. With this language of business used between Europeans and Lenape peoples the aspect of trading and diplomacy would have been much easier. The first recorded signs of this development was recorded by WIC director Johannes de Laet in 1633. De Laet himself never set foot in America so it is thus likely that this pidgin was already in existence for some years prior. It is believed that this pidgin contained just about a few hundred words, much of which is known from a 1684 list which contained 261 words translated into English. While the pidgin is no longer spoken among Lenni Lenape people of today, some remnants of it could still be seen in the loanwords borrowed from others. Playing cards are one example as they were introduced by Europeans and incorporated into an indigenous lifestyle, as could be seen in Daniel Denton’s Brief Description. Centuries after the introduction of playing
198 Cantwell and DiZerega Wall, "Landscapes and Other Objects,” 333. 120
cards researchers in the nineteen-seventies asked Lenape speakers of the Unami dialect in Oklahoma to provide the names of their playing cards. In response the modern Unami speakers said “spades,” “hearts,” “clubs,” and “diamonds” in words which borrowed from the Dutch language.199 When Denton described seeing Lenape peoples using playing cards in his 1670 description many Lenape had already become displaced. It is thus not surprising that Dutch names would have remained in their names for items being that it was under the Dutch that such items would have been introduced. When the English took over the colony and the Dutch moved further to the outskirts of European society it is also possible that they also would have maintained stronger contacts with Lenape peoples no longer living within the coastal region. The incorporation of European words and items into Lenape language and customs is another example of how both groups of individuals blended specific elements into their own and used them to create new ones all together. Eating food is an essential means of survival, and foodways are another example of how Europeans and Native Americans blended elements in New Netherland. Understanding food is a core element in understanding any culture, and in archeology the remains of food and food related artifacts can at times be some of the most productive and revealing aspects to detail a people. In New Netherland the production and consumption of food among Europeans very much resembled that of the Netherlands, but while resembling patria it still became somewhat new and unique with the introduction of American goods. It would have been no surprise that Dutch related products would have been the most imported to the colony due to the Netherlands and West India Company largely managing trade throughout the area. Despite this, actual food products for consumption was not something coming over on a daily basis. Food was necessary for survival among the settlers in New Netherland, and making use of American goods was a valuable means to do that. Understanding that they needed food to survive settlers adapted to their environment and incorporated Native American elements into their style of food preparation and consumption. The fact that this occurred reveals much into the constantly evolving American food culture. The culinary
199 Nicolune van der Sijs, Cookies, Coleslaw, and Stoops: The Influence of Dutch on the North American Languages, (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2009), 284-288. 121
adaptations made by early colonists in New Netherland continued to be upheld in places such as New York and the surrounding areas, and as more individuals came into the area this became one portion of a variety of food types blending into an American cuisine. Every new group of immigrants that came over time brought their own culinary skills and blended it with that of the Americas to create a new form of blended food culture. Archeology within New Netherland and especially New Amsterdam has not yielded a vast plethora of artifacts to truly paint a complete image of culinary life in the colony and capitol. Enough has been uncovered however to provide great insight into the foodways among the early residents of what developed into the New York Metropolitan area. Genre paintings of the Dutch “golden age” very often depicted images of food and food related products as props in images of everyday life. Written primary source documents are also useful in articulating practices of consumption in New Netherland, with one example being Adriaen van der Donk’s Description of New Netherlands. It is thus that while digging up evidence in urban environments may be tough, other means exist to help provide data on food consumption and culinary ways in the colony. Within works such as Van der Donk’s Description are descriptions of agriculture, farming, fishing, and kinds of foods which were produced by those means of subsistence. Artifacts, paintings, and centuries old written descriptions all help provide greater insight into a greater sphere of New Netherland’s culinary world. As the core mother culture of activities among the Dutch in New Netherland, food production and culinary practices within the Dutch Republic itself should be looked at before moving on to how those practices were adapted in North America. As a having a major involvement in commercial activities the Netherlands were able to trade products of consumption throughout various cultures, but the Dutch did still produce a majority of their own food. Some of the items they traded included Iberian and French wines, salt, and oils to the Baltic region in exchange for timber, steel, and iron. The primary group of grains imported included German and Polish wheat and rye which they also exported to Southern Europe. Within the Netherlands bread was a staple food among all social classes, with others being cheese, butter, fish, and vegetables. Beer, wine, milk, and whey were stable beverages with alcohol 122
consumption being a significant practice as touched upon earlier. Bread was primarily made with wheat and rye with the latter being the most affordable for commoners. Bread tended to be bought from bakers rather than baked at home, and the most common baked goods included rolls, pretzels, and cookies. Carrots, cabbages, beats, berries, apples, pears, onions, and garlic were all staple fruits and vegetables. While many town dwellers had their own gardens, farmers sold both in markets within cities and towns with products being transported via waterways. Meat tended to be salted or smoked of animals such as pig and ox, and fish was also salted and smoked as well as consumed fresh and dried. Fish could be bought directly from fishing boats or from markets similar to which the meat of livestock was sold. Among the most affluent individuals meat was a common food of consumption with fresh fruit a commonality while the most consumed item among the poorest consisted of gruels. The preparation of food items consisted of simple techniques such as frying, boiling, making grain porridges, grilling, roasting, stewing, as well as the already mentioned salting and smoking.200 In terms of items related to the production of food ceramic and metal vessels were the most common for cooking. Metal skillets and large pots were used in ovens, stoves, and on open fire. Affluent individuals consumed their food with porcelain bowls and silver trays, tin-enameled earthenware was common among them and middling folks, while the poor used red earthenware, wood, and their hands. Elegant glasses were used as drinking vessels among the richest, regular glassware and stone vessels were used by the middling, and wooden vessels by the poor. The most common earthenware product used by the Dutch in the seventeenth century was the grapen, which were small pots of various colors but red being the most common. These food related products of preparation and consumption were easily available to Dutch consumers and were produced within a number of factories throughout the Netherlands. Being that these goods were produced for a market of food consumers they were indeed exported for use in the colonies. In New Netherland some of the most yielded
200 Meta F. Janowitz, "Indian Corn and Dutch Pots: Seventeenth-Century Foodways in New Amsterdam/New York," Historical Archaeology 27, no. 2 (1993), 7-8, hereafter cited as Janowitz, “Indian Corn and Dutch Pots.” 123
products from archeological sites relating to food consumption included grapen, skillets, and plates.201 The lack of factories for cooking ware and other products of food consumption meant that New Netherland consumers would have had to either make use of what was imported or make these goods themselves. It were these kinds of products which would have been the least affected by change in America among the Dutch due to the availability for them to be transported to consumers. While livestock and farming equipment was brought in from Europe, much of the flora and fauna used and consumed by Europeans in America came directly from the colonies. These American plants and animals were used by European individuals in manners which mirrored similar foods and meals at home in many cases, but in other cases they were adapted into something uniquely European-American. Both English and Dutch horses were used in New Netherland, but it were primarily the latter used in agriculture due to their stockiness. Similar to horses, cattle and pigs were brought over from the Netherlands and New England but the latter was preferred due to their ability to go unsheltered and roam freely. New settlers made use of goats for milk due to the price of cattle, which was perhaps why more goats were imported than sheep. Other imported livestock included chicken, rabbit, geese, and ducks among others. American animals included in food consumption were wild turkeys and deer. These American forms of meat were in many cases brought to the Europeans by Native Americans who were responsible the hunting and trading of game to Europeans for a variety of purposes. Being that New Netherland was a place with a variety of waterways, fish and shellfish are mentioned throughout sources dealing with the colony. While commercialized deep water fishing for cod and herring was a specialized craft in the Netherlands, settlers in America adapted to a more localized form of fishing. Fish were usually caught in the rivers and bays using nets and seins, with sheepshead and striped bass being the two most consumed fish in the area. Mussel and oyster beds were also in abundance, with mussels in such numbers they could be pickled and shipped out for profit.202
201 Janowitz, “Indian Corn and Dutch Pots,” 8-10. 202 Ibid, 11-16. 124
A variety of garden vegetables were brought over from the Netherlands, but a variety of the Americas were also used such as squash and pumpkins. When it came to grain, wheat and rye were used but one uniquely American grain played a very significant role. Maize was already being used by northeastern Native Americans for centuries, and it was a grain that the Dutch were able to adapt into their own diet. Maize came to have an advantage to other grains because it was local, able to grow in a variety of soils, had a higher yield, and could be cultivated without a plow. A principal corn based food consumed by Native Americans and adapted by others was sappen. Sappen was cornmeal boiled into a mush which was eaten in a way similar to porridge. It was the most common food eaten by indigenous individuals, and because its resemblance to porridge and gruel the Dutch easily adapted to it. Sappen thus developed into a universal and widely used dish among Europeans of New Netherland, and once the English took over it was a staple dish among Dutch-American culture. Separating New Amsterdam from the rest of the colony as Jan Folkerts suggested could also provide insight into the lifestyles of individuals in relation to how they sought out their food. It had been noted that outside of New Amsterdam a number of Dutch migrants came from inland agricultural backgrounds while in New Amsterdam there existed merchants, seafarers, and tradesmen from throughout the globe. Being a hub of commercial affairs and not agricultural and farm production, the food consumed by New Amsterdam residents had to come from outside the capital. In reference to this one 1661 document pointed out that those of New Amsterdam received goods from farms on Long Island, New England, and Virginia. While some of the foodstuffs received by the people of New Amsterdam were traded to other places throughout the Atlantic, most of what was received went toward their own consumption.203 In Meta F. Janowitz’s 1993 study on “Seventeenth-Century Foodways in New Amsterdam/New York” two questions were raised. The first asked how Dutch foodways were changed in New Amsterdam. Janowitz concluded that those foodways did not change despite the introduction of indigenous products. The second question asked if Dutch foodways continued into the colonial period of the British. 204 In response to the
203 Janowitz, “Indian Corn and Dutch Pots,” 12-13. 204 Ibid, 20. 125
first question multiple conclusions could be made, which is why the second question matters. With the introduction of English as a dominant culture the Dutch-Americans became an ethnic group, and as more immigrants came to New York and the areas around it the Dutch increasingly became a minority. Many factors attributed to a Dutch culture being maintained among those Dutch-Americans in an English dominated world, but they definitely maintained their culture which included Dutch foodways. Janowitz’s conclusion made sense and the evidence used certainly supported it, but the Dutch were very much impacted by America, and America by the Dutch. The Dutch maintained their cultural values, traits, and norms, but the introduction of an American world caused those Dutch to adapt to a distant landscape and environment. Thus while they did hold on to their Dutch ways of life, those of a Dutch background who came to exist within New Netherland and the capital were not just Dutch, they were Dutch- American. Although contacts were made between the Dutch-Americans and the Netherlands before and after English conquest, the “American-nes” of Dutch-American foodways did not make it unchanged from the food at home. Although Dutch-American food was crafted in a way similar to that in patria, it was still not identical. One of the darkest elements which came of the introduction of European goods and culture to indigenous individuals arrived through alcohol and alcohol consumption. The Europeans of New Netherland were indeed a rowdy bunch of alcohol users, but alcohol consumption had been a part of their culture for thousands of years. When Europeans came to interact with the people of the Hudson in 1609 alcoholic beverages was something entirely new. The first recorded introduction of alcohol to people of that region could be seen during the upriver journey of the Half Moon. On the September twenty-first some native individuals were taken into the ship’s cabin to see whether they had any “treacherie [sic] in them.” The indigenous men were given so much “Wine and Aqua vitae, that they were all merrie.” Robert Juet continued that “one of them was drunke, which had beene aboord of our ship all the time that we had been there: and that was strange to them; for they could not tell how to take it.[sic]” These events were said to have taken place near the site of present day Albany.205 The following day while
205 Jameson, Narratives of New Netherland, 22. 126
Hudson’s mate and four other crewmen went to land, some of the native community came to check up on their brethren who remained on the ship from their intoxication. When they saw their comrades well, more came to trade at about three in the afternoon. After giving the Europeans some tobacco and beads, they then made an oration and sent for a platter of venison to be brought aboard the Half Moon. 206 Days later the same old man who had laid aboard those few days earlier came back with some more of his brethren. They dined together which included another old man’s wife and two young women of about sixteen or seventeen.207 This was the first recorded introduction among many. Soon alcohol would spread throughout indigenous communities far and wide, and it caused much chaos when it arrived. During the time of Adriaen van der Donk he wrote that drinks such as “brandy or strong drink is unknown to them [Native Americans], except to those who frequent settlements, and have learned that beer and wine taste better than water,” and “they never make wine or beer.” He continued to state that when indigenous individuals could obtain liquor they drank “to excess.” While some could build up a tolerance to drink like Europeans, he claimed that most got drunk from one or two small glasses. He further wrote that upon becoming drunk, the natives are malicious, insolent, and troublesome. To prevent this from happening, the government thus forbid the sale of alcohol to native individuals, but some were still able to get ahold of it.208 According to Daniel Denton in 1670, “they are great lovers of strong drink, yet do not care for drinking, unless they have enough to make themselves drunk; and if there be so many in their Company, that there is not sufficient to make them all drunk, they usually select so many out of their Company, proportionable to the quantity of drink, and the rest must be spectators. And if any one chance to be drunk before he hath finisht [sic] his proportion, (which is ordinarily a quart of Brandy, Rum, or Strong-waters) the rest will pour the rest of his part down his throat. They often kill one another at these drunken Matches, which the friends of the murdered person, do revenge upon the Murderer unless he purchase his life with
206 Jameson, Narratives of New Netherland, 23. 207 Ibid, 24. 208 Adriaen Van der Donk, “Of the Food and Sustenance of the Indians,” Description of the New Netherlands, Translated by Jeremiah Johnson, (New York, NY: Cosimo Classics, 1655). 127
money, which they sometimes do.”209 Intoxicating fermented beverages had been existent throughout the Americas, but the intoxicant actions observed by people like Van der Donk and Denton clearly came from a European source. Alcohol devastated Native American communities, and while it is not the subject of this work, the use of European alcoholic beverages by Native Americans in the face of European expansion is a particular topic worth looking into. Alcohol was a definitive weapon employed by Europeans throughout their expansion across North America. This was an expansion which the Europeans believed to be natural and mandated by God. Van der Donk believed that upon the increase of European Christians in New Netherland native peoples would come to disappear and melt away. He then said that it was because of this which compelled him to include them in his Description so that “a memorial of them may be preserved.”210 Years later Denton noted the significant depopulation of indigenous communities on Long Island. He attributed the depopulation of Native American Long Islanders to the “Hand of God,” further stating that “where the English come to settle, a Divine Hand makes way for them, by removing or cutting off the Indians.”211 It was certainly more probable to be the hands of Europeans contributing to the depopulation of Native Americans than the “Hand of God.” While it is not the introduction of alcohol which caused indigenous individuals to become displaced from the coastal region, factors related to that displacement are certainly those which attributed to alcohol abuse. As various cultures blended together and incorporated elements from one another to create new aspects of their cultures in New Netherland, coastal peoples suffered greatly early on despite the introduction of European customs to their own way of life. With the introduction of European people to this old world which seemed new to them, many different groups were left to vie for their existence in a rapidly changing world.
209 Denton, A Brief Description of New York, 39-40 210 Adriaen Van der Donk, “Of their bodily form and appearance, and why we named them (Wilden) Wild Men,” Description of the New Netherlands, Translated by Jeremiah Johnson, (New York, NY: Cosimo Classics, 1655). 211 Denton, A Brief Description of New York, 28-29. 128
Chapter 8: Vying for Dominance in a Changing World
By now it should obvious that various groups of individuals existed within the colony of New Netherland. The year 1609 saw the addition of both Dutch and English individuals to the land of the Hudson and in 1612 came a man from the island of Hispaniola, now the location of both the Dominican Republic and Haiti. In those two years New Netherland became a part of the Dutch Atlantic world and the larger Atlantic world in general. Soon after the Dutch became established in their new colony they were surrounded by other Europeans on all sides as well as surrounded by thousands of people native to their new colony who had existed there for thousands of years. With the introduction of European culture structures of life among Native Americans was forced to shift and be adapted. While many Native American groups used the arrival of Europeans to their own advantages, as time progressed more and more continued becoming displaced as more Europeans arrived. With this arrival of various groups and networks of Europeans, those Europeans then even found themselves at times battling to build, defend, or maintain a role of dominance in that region. In the area of New Netherland much of these struggles for dominance occurred between the Dutch, English, and various Native American groups, but during that era there were also French and Swedish groups attempting to gain a foothold. Despite a significant presence of Huguenot refugees and individuals with a Francophile background in the colony, the French acting on behalf of their national interests did not make up a significant portion of those within coastal New Netherland or the colony as a whole for that matter. Their strong presence in the north however, along with their relationship with those northern inland indigenous peoples gave them an important role in how certain issues and conflicts played out. Those of the Iroquois Confederacy were the principal group of inland peoples in the sphere of New Netherland influence and contacts, and Daniel K. Richter’s work Ordeal of the Longhouse dealt specifically with them in a changing world. While the Dutch were the principal source of European items to the Iroquois for about fifty years, the French were the Europeans who initially introduced a European world to those individuals. Indigenous interactions with the
129
French first began in the mid sixteenth century with the introduction of Jacques Cartier to the St. Lawrence area. This came more direct in 1603 with Samuel de Champlain, and the 1608 establishment of a French post at Québec ensured that contacts would be more frequent. The Iroquois probably had their first interactions with Frenchmen around a year later during an expedition into the Ticonderoga area. Within these initial years the Iroquois were largely separated from a strong European influence because other peoples existed between them and Europeans, but those interactions made permanent changes to the world around them. Henry Hudson sailed up the North River the same year that the French entered the Ticonderoga area. It is thus that in 1609 the Haudenosaunee became surrounded from two different directions by two different Europeans.212 During these early years the Mohawk would have been the only principal Iroquoian group to have major interactions with the Dutch, but all Iroquois and inland peoples were then to be affected by two separate European groups seeking to make a profit out of their land. Indigenous peoples too sought to use the introduction of Europeans to their own advantages, and because Iroquois were separated from the Europeans by other native groups they did not necessarily have direct access to metal weapons. With the pace of trade picking up between Europeans on both sides with non-Iroquois of the area hostilities were bound to arise. In their own attempts to dominate trade with Europeans the Iroquois then began to hijack furs. In addition to their attempts to gain control in trade, the death which occurred through those endeavors led to an increase in wars of mourning. An example of these violent interactions on one side would be those between the Seneca and French connected Huron and on the other Mohawk raids along the St. Lawrence. The French continued selling to enemies of the Five Nations such as the Huron which led to further violent interactions in the 1640s. While the French themselves were not the primary victims, their actions in the fur trade caused heavy amounts of conflict between the Iroquois and other inland peoples. For a time when hostilities were high with the French and their native allies the Dutch maintained good connections with the Iroquois in part due to their connection to wampum production. The Dutch also became known as metal makers by the Mohawk, who used the term Kristoni to refer to them.213
212 Richter, The Ordeal of the Longhouse. 213 Ibid, 75. 130
Positive relations were not permanent for the Dutch however and the French eventually did achieve better relations with the Iroquois. Some individuals claimed that the French provided better gifts than the Dutch during their visits, and unlike the Dutch there was also the presence of an evangelization process. This came through French Jesuit missionaries that sought to convert indigenous individuals where Dutch Calvinists did not. When the time came that the English seized control of New Netherland the Iroquoian population was shrinking and some had gone to live in settlements which held stronger connections to the French. Dutch residents of the colony continued to participate in the fur trade, but it was then under the domain of the English. As time progressed into the turn of the century the Iroquois and other inland peoples became indigenous peoples within an increasingly European-American world.214 The other European power which attempted to transplant a colony on land claimed by the Dutch West India Company was Sweden. Led by former director-general of New Netherland Peter Minuit, the Swedish established Fort Christina along the Delaware in 1638. This was the first settlement in what became known as New Sweden. As a whole, the colony would last until 1655 when Peter Stuyvesant was able to regain the area for the West India Company. While some have argued that the colony was insignificant due to its low population and short lifespan individuals such as Terry G. Jordan made an entirely different argument. According to Jordan the inhabitants of New Sweden played a major role in developing the character of the American frontier. He attributed certain forms of carpentry, folk architecture, and fence building that developed throughout the European peopling of the frontier woodlands to the Swedish inhabitants along the Delaware. To defend his argument Jordan presented five elements of material culture within the expanded American frontier that had roots of diffusion in New Sweden.215 Rather than look at the legacy New Sweden had on American development, Visa Immonen looked to reconstruct that past environment. There were less than seven hundred inhabitants of the colony at a given time (Jordan wrote five hundred) with those
214 Richter, The Ordeal of the Longhouse. 215 Terry G Jordan, "New Sweden's Role on the American Frontier: A Study in Cultural Preadaptation," Geografiska Annaler. Series B, Human Geography 71, no. 2 (1989), hereafter cited as Jordan, “New Sweden's Role on the American Frontier.” 131
of Finland making up about two hundred and forty individuals. The Swedes who occupied the colony hailed mainly from Svealand, Vastergotland, and Bohuslan, and there was also a small population of Germans and Baltic peoples. Ninety-five percent of the population were sailors, soldiers, farmers, and laborers while the other five percent were wealthy burghers. The Finnish farmers who occupied the region practiced a type of slash- and-burn method which had origins in the inland regions of their homeland. In describing this method of farming Immonen cited the work of Jordan to explain that this farming method joined with that of Lenape peoples within that region. Unlike the other Europeans which existed throughout the northeast, relations between the European and indigenous populations within the area of New Sweden was largely peaceful.216 Overall, both Jordan and Immonen described elements in which cultures merged within New Sweden which affected the development a something American. The colony was established at a time when New Netherland was still in its rowdy and poor performing phase, and it was dissolved after the Dutch colony’s maturation following reforms made by Stuyvesant and the ends of a WIC monopoly on trade.217 During the era of New Netherland the Swedish failed to establish a long lasting colony of their own, but they did produce lasting endeavors which amalgamated into a cannon of America development. Despite the colony’s failure the people of the northlands themselves did carve out their existence in America, and they were present in the Dutch settlements of that era as well. This could be seen variously throughout court documents from the era, some of which have been mentioned in earlier discussions. While the French existed in New France throughout the entire New Netherland era and French individuals existed within New Netherland itself, they did not combat the Dutch for control of land between the Connecticut and Delaware like the Swedish and English. Unlike the Swedish, the English lasted throughout the entirety of the New Netherland era and it were they who ultimately achieved the struggle for dominance in that region. The relationship between the Dutch and English was a bit rocky throughout the entirety of New Netherlands’ existence, with the English acting sometimes as friend and sometimes as foe. While
216 Jordan, “New Sweden's Role on the American Frontier.” 217 Visa Immonen, "Farming and Brass Kettles as Forms of Colonial Encounter: New Sweden from an Archaeological Perspective," Scandinavian Studies 83, no. 3 (2011), 365-86. 132
Virginia was occupied since 1607 and individuals from that colony did interact with Dutchmen through trade, the primary conflicts and interactions between the Dutch and English in regards to New Netherland came between that colony and New England. The legitimacy of New Netherland as a whole was not necessarily one accepted by the English as much as it was tolerated. It was also one contested by the English since the very beginning. Arguments for an English right to the lands between the Connecticut and Delaware go all the way back to the 1497 English voyage led by Italian explorer Giovanni Caboto. Individuals such as Beauchamp Plantagenet in his 1648 work New Albion made that very argument. When describing the land in question Plantagenet did not mention the name New Netherland at all and referred to all land within the area by either English or Native American names.218 The second reason argued for an English right to the area came from the charters issued by Queen Elizabeth I which authorized the establishment of colonies between Newfoundland and Spanish Florida. A third came from the charters granted by King James I for the foundation of the Virginia and Plymouth Companies. The former was to establish a colony in the Chesapeake and the latter colonies between Maryland and Maine. Following this fur trading stations began to develop around Maine, and in 1620 the Puritans established their colony in what is now Massachusetts.219 In 1606 both the Plymouth and London Companies laid claim to all unexplored land between the 38th and 42nd degree lines of north latitude.220 Upon learning of the establishment of a Dutch West India Company English ambassador Sir Dudley Carleton filed an official complaint in 1622, and reminded the Dutch that New Netherland was rightfully claimed by the English.221 Carleton was quoted to have said “Hollanders have planted a colony” in “certain new quarters of Nova Anglica” which had belonged to England “for a long time past.”222
218 Sabine Klein. “"They Have Invaded the Whole River": Boundary Negotiations in Anglo-Dutch Colonial Discourse," Early American Studies 9, no. 2 (2011), 337, hereafter cited as Klein, “They Have Invaded the Whole River.” 219 Meuwese, “The Dutch Connection,” 300-301. 220 Rink, Holland on the Hudson, 29-30. 221 Meuwese, “The Dutch Connection,” 303. 222 Rink, Holland on the Hudson, 69. 133
In response to English complaints the Dutch West India Company replied that it was through permanent settlement which established the rightful claim to New Netherland which the Dutch had begun to establish.223 In his 1650 Representation of New Netherland Adriaen van der Donk legitimated the Dutch control over New Netherland by citing Hudson’s “discovery” of the land, it being referred to as New Netherland by the people there and abroad, and it were the Dutch that developed and maintained the colony at their own costs. In his writings Van der Donk also wrote that the Dutch had “purchased” and established themselves in the land that became New England well before any English arrived. In doing so he cited Dutch exploration and negotiations with indigenous peoples of the Connecticut River region going back to 1614. When writing of the English along the Connecticut, Van der Donk claimed that the English had “invaded the whole river” and that they did so because they claimed the Dutch left it in “idle and waste.” Sabine Klein pointed out that the argument made by Van der Donk suggested that the land prior to Dutch occupation and claims was nameless and unpossessed.224 It can thus be seen that the English and Dutch both contested each other’s right to claim the land between the Connecticut and Delaware. Another factor which added strain at least on the Dutch side of things was the constant increase of English individuals within New Netherland. Fears observed by some Dutch at the migration of the English to the Dutch colony could be seen by a 1635 letter written by Wouter Van Twiller to WIC directors in which he stated that without more colonists coming to New Netherland it would become overrun by the English.225 The English continued to come to the Dutch colony for a number of reasons and not simply because it was claimed by their crown. One such example would be Anne Hutchinson who came to the colony after being exiled by Puritan New England over her own ascertain that one could know God’s will directly. Hutchinson and her compatriots were granted land in the area near where Pelham Bay Park exists today in the Bronx. It had been written that the administrators of New Netherland granted land to foreigners in the colony in order for
223 Meuwese, “The Dutch Connection,” 303. 224 Klein, “They Have Invaded the Whole River,” 27-35. 225 Meuwese, “The Dutch Connection,” 322. 134
them to act as a buffer between New Amsterdam and Native Americans in case conflict arose. In a number of cases this was actually the very thing that occurred. Anne Hutchinson is one of the prime examples given what occurred to her following that migrating to New Netherland. After an outbreak of violence at least partially provoked by director-general Kieft, Anne Hutchinson was murdered along with her six children and nine others by a group of Native Americans on the very land which was granted to her by Kieft. The Hutchinson Parkway and river that runs past her former property today is named in her memory.226 The indigenous individual who took credit for the killing of Hutchinson was a Munsee speaking warrior named Wampage. Following the death of Hutchinson and her clan, Wampage incorporated the name of Hutchinson’s land as his own. The area near today’s Pelham Bay Park was referred to as Anne’s Hoeck (Anne’s Neck) and the name taken on by Wampage was “An hoock.” Wampage’s new name along with its abbreviation “AH” could be seen throughout various succeeding treaties and deeds.227 The grant to Hutchinson and her followers were just one of many grants made by Kieft to English groups and individuals. In November of 1644, Kieft granted a number of Englishmen the right to establish themselves on “the great plains” of Long Island between Gerritsen Bay and Hempstead Bay. Daniel Denton and his father were two of the individuals involved in that particular grant. It was stated that the Englishmen were to enjoy in a “large and ample manner as their own free Land of Inheritance.”228 The following year Kieft granted more Long Island land to Englishmen this time in Flushing and the surrounding area.229 Kieft also granted English residents the right to build a town at Gravesend as well as the freedom of religion.230 The grant involving Gravesend would prove to cause further problems between the Dutch and English later on. In 1659 Coney Island was chosen by Amsterdam blacksmith Arent Theunisz to be the location
226 Shorto, Island at the Center of the World, 160. 227 Cantwell and diZerega Wall, Unearthing Gotham, 127. 228 E.B. O’Callaghan, trans. Laws and Ordinances of New Netherland 1638-1674, (Albany, NY: Weed, Parsons, and Company, 1868), 42, hereafter cited as O’Callaghan, Laws and Ordinances. 229 Ibid, 48. 230 Ibid, 53-57. 135
of Dirck de Wolff’s sugar refinery. The Coney Island location intersected with land claimed to be granted to the English of Gravesend years earlier by Kieft. In response to work being done to construct the refinery the English residents assembled at court in New Amsterdam to challenge the patent held by De Wolff for the Coney Island refinery. Although Stuyvesant was reluctant to have issues, he found that the land grant Kieft granted to the English of Gravesend wasn’t properly filed. He then authorized the refinery to continue being built, which did not cease English hostilities to the project. The angry residents of Gravesend then began to continuously sabotage the project which eventually led Dirck de Wolff to petition to the West India Company. This led the WIC to order Stuyvesant to station soldiers at the site of De Wolff’s refinery but the director- general was hesitant to do so for the lack of WIC soldiers which existed in the colony. The English of Gravesend continued to sabotage the refinery, and after two years of attempting to set up a profitable sugar refinery the De Wolff’s were forced to abandon the project altogether.231 The situation involving Anne Hutchinson reflected a connectedness between both New Netherland and New England which occurred in numerous situations. Throughout the 1630s and 1640s both the Dutch and English were western European Protestant strangers in land occupied by people who already lived there for thousands of years. The lands themselves overlapped through contested borders, a mixed population spread over those borders, and ties already existing among Native Americans who were upon the land before those European borders existed. Hutchinson was caught in a problem with her fellow English of New England, became one of the English occupying land claimed by the Dutch, and was killed as a result of tensions between both those Europeans and Native Americans. Although Hutchinson’s death came about through a war provoked by Willem Kieft, the English of New England still played a critical role in those activities. The most direct example would be English officers aiding Dutch New Netherlanders in the conflict which became known as Kieft’s War. The borders that continuously shifted between the Dutch and English would not have meant the same things to indigenous peoples who occupied those lands and had
231 Rink, Holland on the Hudson, 84-86. 136
ties across the region well before those were movable borders established. Sabine Klein pointed out that in both New Netherland and New England territorial claims were increasingly being legitimated through local legal processes and minimized the traditional national form of possession. To use an example she referred to the 1638 Hartford Treaty which legitimated land to the Narragansetts, Mohegans, and English.232 In addition to direct land purchases treaties were used to define certain spaces, and the same problems which arose regarding the purchase of Native American land are also present in defining it by a piece of paper written in a European language. As seen by the conflicts which arose between Iroquois and their neighbors in response to the presence of Europeans, the relationships between various native American groups was altered. Different Europeans made bonds with different Algonquian and Iroquoian speaking groups, and those bonds shifted how those various Europeans and Native Americans interacted with themselves and with one another in both New Netherland and New England. One such issue touched upon earlier involved the Mohawks. The Mohawk-Mahican War of the 1620s had been regarded by historians as one of the first defining examples of an Iroquois war directly related to the arrival of Europeans. William Starna argued against this where he stated that that this war was not the one single event that established a pattern of “alliances, trade, and conflict,” despite being an important issue for understanding Dutch-Native American-French relations.233 Starna countered a number of traditional assumptions that came about in past studies of the conflict because to him, they had a number of implications regarding interpretations of various European-Native American relations which followed. He continued to argue that hostilities between natives and Dutch on the Connecticut in 1630s, Kieft’s War, the Peach War of 1650s, and the Esopus War all require attention and reexamination by historians, as well as the largely absent presence of violence among Iroquois-Dutch relations. All of these events are connected despite the fact that they can also easily be looked at as separate incidents. There were relations which existed between various Europeans prior to their existence in the northeast and the same could be said for the Native Americans. When both groups came to exist among
232 Klein, “They Have Invaded the Whole River,” 326-327. 233 Starna, “Assessing American Indian-Dutch Studies,” 24. 137
each other in the region these relationships shifted and were altered, often overlapping with shifting dynamics.234 The most clear example of how these various interactions were connected could be seen following the long wake of the Pequot War, which was why Anne Hutchinson could be used as the perfect example. There are many places to begin when addressing how all of these events developed. The Dutch initially claimed Connecticut and attempted to settle the region with the initial Walloon colonists who arrived. With the Dutch presence in the area they built relations with the Pequot which allowed that native group to rise in power among the neighboring groups. Through their trading alliance with the Dutch the Pequot were able to gain metal arrowheads made form Dutch copper. In a response to the rising influence of the Pequot new acts of violence began to arise among the other Algonquian speaking groups of New England. The Pequot were quickly able to bring under their control a number of indigenous groups throughout the middle Connecticut Valley. Isaack de Rasieres reported in 1628 that Algonquian groups form eastern Long Island also came under tributary control of the Pequot. During a 1627 visit to the Plymouth colony De Rasieres sold fifty fathoms of wampum to the English. While he thought this would demonstrate a Dutch dominance in the area, the increasing English population of the Plymouth colony then realized they too could make an effective use of wampum. With the English then entering the wampum trade economic competition between both European powers and various Algonquian speaking peoples began to intensify. The Narragansetts and others then attempted to use the English undermine the position of the Pequots. This was solidified in 1631 when Algonquian communities reached out to the Plymouth and Massachusetts Bay colonies to establish an alliance against the Pequot.235 In June 1633 Jacob van Curler negotiated with Pequots to establish Fort Good Hope on the Connecticut River. The negotiation for Fort Good Hope was seen differently by both parties. The Dutch intended it to be a place for all native peoples to come in and trade with them while the Pequot sought to control which native groups could participate in trade. Following the completion of Ft. Good Hope a group of
234 Starna, “Assessing American Indian-Dutch Studies,” 27. 235 Meuwese, “The Dutch Connection,” 308-311. 138
Pequots attacked another Algonquian speaking group that attempted to trade at the fort. This angered the Dutch, who in response took the Pequot sachem Tatobem hostage. In an attempt to get the sachem back a ransom was paid by the Pequot, but Tatobem was then murdered at the fort by the Dutch. The Pequot engaged in traditional revenge killing following the death of their sachem, but rather than taking revenge upon a Dutchman they instead murdered Englishman John Stone and his crew on the Connecticut. The Pequots relayed to the English that they knew no difference between Dutch and English, and Stone had also previously engaged in the kidnapping of two natives. Another Pequot sachem was then killed at Ft. Good Hope which caused Pequot-Dutch relations to further deteriorate. The Pequot then attempted to engage in trade with the English, but this was also at the time that English had begun to expand further into Connecticut. Upon learning of Ft. New Hope John Winthrop protested its establishment and wrote back and forth with director-general Van Twiller debating its legitimacy. The English then in September of 1633 established their own fort on the Connecticut. It was around that time when English colonists themselves also began moving into the Connecticut area. With the English fort being strategically at the mouth of the Connecticut Dutch operations in fort upriver were hindered, and by 1635 there were around two hundred-fifty English colonists living near the Dutch fort itself.236 During the time that the Pequot were attempting to build relations with the English, a smallpox epidemic also arose which devastated their community. According to the numbers it was estimated only 3,000 Pequot made it out of the epidemic in 1634 compared to numbers of around 16,000 prior. Following the epidemic the Narragansett continued with fighting against the Pequot despite also being affected by smallpox. Mohegan sachem Uncas also took up against the Pequot too and sought English aid in doing so. Pequot sachem Sassacus then went to the Massachusetts Bay colony in an attempt to establish a military and trade alliance in autumn 1634 but in doing so he made the mistake of inviting some English to settle on Pequot land. The English refused an alliance militarily and demanded large amounts of wampum and the deliverance of the murderers of John Stone. These were terms which Sassacus could hardly accept as
236 Meuwese, “The Dutch Connection,” 311-317. 139
it would have left the Pequot with their power diminished even further. In around 1636 the Dutch-Pequot alliance was restored, yet throughout the Pequot War director-general Van Twiller attempted to maintain relations with both the Pequot and English. One example of this could be seen where the crew of a Dutch vessel was asked by Englishmen at Ft. Saybrook to negotiate the release of two English girls held as captives by the Pequot. The Dutch agreed to negotiate for the release as long as the English would allow them to continue to trade their goods with the Pequot. Despite their intent to play both sides, the crew of the Dutch vessel held Pequots who came to trade as hostages and succeeded in acquiring the two English girls.237 As could be seen, prior to the Pequot War violent acts to secure a dominant role were occurring between the Dutch and English, both parties of Europeans and Native Americans, and the Pequot and their native neighbors. For roughly a year leading up to April of 1637 a number of skirmishes including raids and thefts occurred between the Pequot and both their indigenous neighbors and early English settlers of Connecticut. These were events which culminated that April when the English village of Wethersfield was attacked by a party of Pequot warriors which resulted in a few deaths, captives, and slaughtered cattle. In a response to the raid which terrified English colonists throughout the region a settler militia was organized to retaliate. This was a militia headed by Captain John Mason and aided by both Mohegan and Narragansett allies. In late May the militia came upon a Pequot fort at Mystic to enact their revenge. The soldiers descended upon the fort while its residents were still asleep and set it aflame. As the great blaze spread throughout the fort the soldiers circled it and attacked all who attempted to flee the flames. The fire was described by observers as “a fiery Oven” which filled the “Place with dead Bodies!” It was estimated by William Bradford that about four hundred Pequots were murdered by the attack, Captain Mason estimated up to seven hundred.238 Following the massacre at Mystic the English militia hunted those Pequot who remained. In defense of this the Englishman Israel Stoughton argued in August 1637
237 Meuwese, “The Dutch Connection,” 314-319. 238 Katherine A. Grandjean, "The Long Wake of the Pequot War," Early American Studies 9, no. 2 (2011), 383- 385, hereafter cited as Grandjean, “The Long Wake of the Pequot War.” 140
that “we and our friends will suffer much by scattered wretches, if they be not closely followed.” When the Pequot Nepaupuck was killed in December of 1639, William Coddington wrote to John Winthrop that he had the names of twelve other Pequots still alive. Pequot sachem Sassacus gathered a following of his fellow surviving tribesman and attempted to lead them into the territory claimed by the Dutch. They were followed by the English and at one point ambushed near Fairfield where hundreds were both murdered and taken captive. Among the remaining were Sassacus who continued on to Mohawk territory where they may have thought of seeking refuge. Unfortunately for Sassacus the exact opposite happened and his group of Pequot were instead slaughtered by the Mohawks that received them. The head of Sassacus himself was then sent to Boston along with those of his brother and five other sachems.239 In an effort to resolve issues between the English, Mohegan, Narragansett, and Pequot authorities of New England invited sachems to come negotiate a treaty. One particular group uninvited were the Pequot who remained absent from all talks. The deal reached became known as the 1638 Treaty of Hartford which was signed in September of that year. Katharina Grandjean argued that the 1638 treaty “provided historians with a convenient ending point for their narratives of the Pequot War.”240 Despite the narrative existent that the war had ended, the presence of no actual Pequots at treaty negotiations negated their opinion on the matter altogether. The principal indigenous individuals who were present at the signing of the treaty were Mohegan sachem Uncas and sachem Miantonomi of the Narraganset, both of whom assisted the English in decimating the Pequot. Those two groups had their own issues with the Pequot, and their alliance with the English could be seen as an active attempt to increase their own standing. The 1638 treaty took away all territory belonging to the Pequot and made their name defunct. All remaining Pequot were to thus belong to the Narragansett and Mohegan. In addition, one of the primary stated goals of the 1638 treaty had to do not with the Pequot but settling peace between Narragansett and Mohegan. The Pequot were thus forced out of existence despite hundreds still living following the signing of the treaty. While some did take refuge among the benefitting groups they were then
239 Grandjean, "The Long Wake of the Pequot War," 390-398. 240 Ibid, 391. 141
designated a part of, others drifted back to the place of their former villages while some thus continued to wander.241 Simply because negotiations were brokered however and the English of New England experienced decades of relatively no violence form indigenous individuals, tensions were still there. Indigenous allies of the English had their own motives for forming an alliance, following the eradication of the Pequot those new English allies became increasingly a problem. The growing numbers of English would prove to be uneasy among some native individuals and tensions were still high between the English and Native Americans of New England. In the summer of 1640 it was rumored that Miantonomi who had previously allied with the English against the Pequot “sent a great present of wampum to the Mohawks, to aid him against the English.” Two summers later in 1642 another rumor arose of Miantonomi seeking aid against the English. This time it was said that the Narragansett sachem traveled across the Sound to Long Island seeking support from other natives against the English in New England. This was further attested to when a veteran of the Pequot War Lion Gardiner came upon a meeting between Miantonomi and Montauk elders. In seeking to gain support, a speech attributed to Miantonomi included a statement that the English will “cut down the grass” and that “we shall be starved.” Because of the English destruction, Miantonomi asked the Montauk to “kill [English] men women &children” upon giving his signal. Despite the solid possibility for such plots to have taken place, Katharine Grandjean also suggested the possibility that Uncas, former enemy of Miantonomi and pledged English ally, manufactured the rumors against his Narraganset neighbor. This could further be alluded to by the events which played out after. In a 1643 showdown between Uncas’ Mohegan and Miantonomi’s Narragansett took place. Miantonomi was captured by Uncas and taken to the English at Hartford where he was executed. The conflict between the Narraganset and Mohegan following the Hartford Treaty is one example of how all had not ended with one piece of paper.242 A valuable question asked by Katharine Grandjean following the war’s long wake was “what happened to the soldiers of the Pequot War?” Following the participants of
241 Grandjean, "The Long Wake of the Pequot War," 392-393. 242 Ibid, 400-403. 142
the Pequot War into the decades which succeeded it was a task Grandjean argued necessary to understand how uneasy the perceived “peace” of those decades were. The memory of the war did not die with the Pequot, it lived on in the minds of the participants both indigenous and European for many years to come. It affected various communities as word of the violence reached uninvolved parties as well as the participants and their kin whom were spread throughout the region. The spread of people and words connected to the war was one which Grandjean wrote “ensured that the echoes of the Pequot War were felt widely.” It is not often asked “what effect conquest had on the conquerors,” and if the violence of war travelled “with them” both physically and mentally.243 It appeared that most of the English individuals who fought in the Pequot war profited from their participation in the war. A number of them served in Connecticut courts, received land for their service, and had numerous children. Grandjean was able to put together a list of just five individuals who appeared to have lived negative sorts of lives following their service in the Pequot War. All five of the men seem to have had excessive alcohol use as a prevalent pattern associated with them. In the late summer of 1638 Arthur Peach and three other servants were engaged in a journey brought on by fleeing their masters. Peach was a veteran in the Pequot war and had at one point bragged to his comrades as having killed many indigenous individuals. Peach, who was considered the leader of the group, was fleeing possibly due to the intercourse he had with a “maid” Dorothy Temple. The fleeing group of four were heading from the Plymouth colony for refuge in New Netherland. During this journey the group became lost and began to set up camp when they spotted a Nipmuck man named Penowayanquis. Peach’s group invited Penowayanquis to sit with them, but as the Nipmuck grew close he was slashed with a blade and robbed of his goods. Penowayanquis was left to die, but before his passing he was able to inform a group passing Narragansetts of Peach’s assault. Roger Williams of Providence learned of Peach’s actions and moved swiftly to settle the problem at hand. The actions of Peach had caused both the Narragansett and people of Providence to fear some kind of slaughter was brewing. All the members of Peach’s crew were apprehended and tried
243 Grandjean, "The Long Wake of the Pequot War," 382-385. 143
for the murder of Penowayanqus. One member of Peach’s crew named Daniel Crosse managed to flee his conviction, but the remaining three were hanged.244 Arthur Peach was an individual Grandjean used to connect the violence of the Pequot War to the violence that followed in New Netherland. Peach participated in the massacre at Mystic and eventually embarked on an endeavor to flee later into New Netherland. While the English of New England faced relative peace following the 1638 Treaty of Hartford, a tremendous amount of violence was about to develop in Dutch territory very close to the westernmost English settlements. Connecticut and New York are not far from each other whatsoever, considering both states share a border it could be said that they are close indeed. During the time of the Pequot War the border technically was not fixed. The English were settling Connecticut, yet the Dutch claimed up to the Connecticut River as New Netherland. While the Dutch claimed Long Island as well, it were the English who had begun settling its eastern portion. The possibility of Miantonomi touring eastern Long Island to recruit allies against the English is no coincidence. The people of New Netherland and New England, whether they be indigenous or European, were connected in various ways, and knew what was going on in their neighboring areas. What occurred to the Pequot would have been no secret to individuals of Lenapehoking or other Long Island Algonquians.245 In the greater stream of events in colonial American history, no violence ceased between the Pequot War and Kieft’s War. The violence was back to back and both the Dutch and English, and the Algonquian and Iroquois speaking peoples were connected. In March 1643 Pequot War veteran Roger Williams negotiated a peace deal between indigenous Long Islanders and the Dutch.246 In the winter of 1644 Captain John Underhill led two expeditions against indigenous peoples on behalf of the Dutch in New Netherland. His expedition against natives of western Long Island took about one hundred-twenty indigenous lives, and his expedition near Stamford repeated those which he partook in at Mystic. In his latter confrontation he took up to five hundred lives through surrounding and torching wigwams. This was an attack which took place near
244 Grandjean, “The Long Wake of the Pequot War,” 379-382. 245 Ibid, 409. 246 Ibid, 407. 144
where Pound Ridge, New York exists today, and would not have been far from the area Sassacus was followed to by the earlier militia. It had been noted that Stamford was an area occupied mostly of English individuals who had come out of the Pequot War though migrations from Wethersfield. The town of Greenwich was another in the vicinity of Stamford which submitted to Kieft’s government. Both Stamford and Greenwich were populated by Englishmen who experienced the Pequot War, with many previously hailing from Wethersfield. Both areas were some of the closest English villages to the Dutch at the time, and Underhill’s motives in aiding the Dutch would surely have had his fellow Englishmen in mind.247 The expansion of the English would prove to take a toll on the Dutch claim to New Netherland. While Stuyvesant was responsible for important reforms which occurred in the colony, he was also responsible for significant losses. During Stuyvesant’s administration New Sweden had finally become part of New Netherland again, but most of Long Island and Connecticut were transferred to the English. The negotiations which made this decision came about in the 1650 Treaty of Hartford in which the boundary between New Netherland and New England was moved fifty miles west of the Connecticut River. On Long Island this boundary was close to the current Nassau-Suffolk County border, and their names reflect the Dutch on the west and English on the East. Despite the area west of English Long Island remaining Dutch, a significant English population remained. While the Dutch had settlements in places like Brooklyn, Midwood, New Utrecht, Flatbush, Flatlands, and Bushwick, the English had large populations of settlers in other areas such as Flushing and that between Far Rockaway, Jamaica, and Hempstead. Most of the neighborhoods with a large Dutch population exist within where the borough of Brooklyn now exists today. In a sense the English used the Dutch’s own argument against then. By 1650 it was the English, not the Dutch, who had populated Connecticut and most of Long Island. The year 1650 would prove to be one viewed as a great victory for the English, and it would only be a matter of time before they could gain total control of New Netherland.
247 Grandjean, "The Long Wake of the Pequot War," 407-409. 145
Since the time of Kieft’s War the English Captain John Underhill had been living within New Netherland seeking out evidence of the Dutch arming Native Americans which was a common rumor circulating for years. The English also in 1653 sent a delegation to New Netherland at Stuyvesant’s request to find answers for themselves. It was during this time that more grievances were issued against the Dutch. Unlike the group that came upon Stuyvesant’s request, the director-general was not aware of Underhill’s intentions. Once the true goals of Underhill were discovered by Stuyvesant the English captain was briefly imprisoned. Following his release Underhill then began a new campaign against the Dutch. In this endeavor he went to the English populated settlements of Flushing and Hempstead where he rose the flag of English Parliament. Underhill then fled to Rhode Island. To add insult to injury Stuyvesant’s former assistant Englishmen George Baxter who was in Gravesend began to engage in correspondences with New England to establish an English Long Island militia. This was a time of heightened hostilities because the First Anglo-Dutch war was underway and the English within New England and New Netherland were living in a close proximity to the Dutch. During this maritime conflict a pamphlet entered circulation called The Second Amboyna Tragedy which stoked the fears of English colonists. The pamphlet was a reprint of a story put out decades earlier which covered a massacre of English individuals in Asia by the Dutch. The 1654 circulation of this pamphlet in the North American colonies alluded to an idea that the Dutch would massacre English colonists in New Netherland or New England which never happened. The First Anglo- Dutch War was the initial within a series of outbreaks which occurred throughout the century following the initial outbreak. While the war seemed to cease that year, the Dutch would only be able to maintain control of New Netherland for just another decade.248 Throughout the summer leading to the 1664 English seizure of New Netherland tensions were high. Rumors were circulating that something was afoot with the English. These rumors were hardly without basis because months earlier in January of that year a plan to attack New Amsterdam was agreed upon by several officials in England. A
248 Rink, Holland on the Hudson, 250-255. 146
year earlier within the colonies themselves Stuyvesant was also informed that Connecticut was claiming all of Long Island, including Dutch populated neighborhoods in today’s Kings County. In addition to those claims the English in Connecticut promoted riots amongst the English colonists of Flushing, Elmhurst, Gravesend, Jamaica, and Hempstead. By August of 1664 Peter Stuyvesant would have seen an attack inevitable, but had barley any time to prepare as four English frigates had already reached the waters immediately north of the colony. These frigates were headed by Richard Nicolls who upon arrival began recruiting colonial troops to ease his capture of the colony.249 Stuyvesant had barley any soldiers or resources to defend the colony against the English. In one of the letters exchanged between Stuyvesant and Nicolls the Dutchman had stated that “we are obliged to defend Our place,” but to engage in that defense surely would have resulted in the destruction of the city. In the face of the siege ninety- three leading members of New Amsterdam including Stuyvesant’s son Balthasar signed a petition to the director-general asking him to avoid bloodshed at all costs. Backed into a wall Stuyvesant was forced to surrender New Amsterdam to Nicolls.250 The acquisition of New Netherland secured for the English a dominant role across much of the North American east coast. The siege signified the first direct attempt by the English state at a military occupation in North America. One reason behind state action in this endeavor was a response to certain freedoms individuals in New England held from the state government. While New Englanders may have had some freedoms from the Crown and Parliament due to their distance, New England was already aiding their mother country for decades in diminishing the longevity of their Dutch neighbors in America. Actions directly by the state added to the shift in dynamics which would take place in English North America as well as the larger world it was connected to. Various historians had argued that the seizure of New Netherland signified the a shift from an inter-imperial Atlantic community to one dominated by the
249 L.H. Roper, "The Fall of New Netherland and Seventeenth-Century Anglo-American Imperial Formation, 1654-1676," The New England Quarterly 87, no. 4 (2014), 685-689, hereafter cited as Roper, "The Fall of New Netherland.” 250 Shorto, Island at the Center of the World, 298. 147
British empire.251 The power and influence of the English throughout the Atlantic and world was rising dramatically around that time. By winning the struggle for dominance in the rapidly expanding Europeanized societies of the northeast coast the English secured a central role in the developments within the colonial United States. The role played by the French is perhaps acknowledged more for their prolonged presence in Canada and the aid they gave colonists in the American Revolution. With that said the roles of the Dutch, Africans, Native Americans, Swedish, and others should hardly be dismissed or lessened because the English gained full control of the land which would one day be referred to as the Thirteen Colonies. America today is often understood to be a place within which individuals with backgrounds from a variety of ethnicities and cultures exist as Americans. The America of the distant past is not often understood for its vast pluralistic nature, but connections could be made directly with those earliest pluralistic groups from within the Lenapehoking and New Netherland eras all the way to the pluralisms existent in the United States today.
251 Roper, "The Fall of New Netherland,” 687-689. 148
Chapter 9: Colonial New York
Following the English takeover New Netherland was no more. The Dutch colony was broken up into a division of colonies which would include New York, New Jersey, Delaware, and Pennsylvania. A great many of the Dutch individuals who resided within the colony which was now under foreign rule decided to return to Europe but there were still a significant number of those who chose to keep on with their lives in America. Not just those Dutch who stayed but all within the former colony would then in turn have developed into some of the oldest non-indigenous families in not only those colonies that followed but the entire future United States as a whole. New Amsterdam, the capital of New Netherland, then became New York City, capital of the state of New York. Philadelphia too, the city which would become America’s first largest was an area which existed within New Netherland and New Sweden, but it was not until the English takeover that it would become that city. While the land immediately across the Hudson from Manhattan such as Pavonia was incorporated into the colony of New Jersey, the ties which existed between the two continued to remain connected and close. Over the next sixty years each of those new colonies would develop into their own uniqueness under the English, but New York City would continue to develop that central role which began under the Dutch. The processes which made New York a commercial and multicultural capital would only increase as the city grew larger and was filled with more and more incoming immigrants. Layers and layers of groups of individuals continued to come to New York City, and as years progressed the old would move on to other areas of the increasing Europeanized world as new groups would come to the capital to engage in their new American life. It is evident that the first to become displaced with the increase of European settlements were Lenape and other coastal indigenous groups. As the English took over the formerly Dutch colony it would be the Dutch to become the next displaced. Over the next sixty years a number of Dutch individuals either left the capital for more rural Dutch enclaves in the Hudson Valley or New Jersey if they did decide to remain in the English dominated America. This is not to say that during that period Dutch individuals left New
149
York City entirely. There were certainly pockets of Dutch-American individuals that maintained their language and culture, as well as continued to play prominent roles in the city. Throughout the sixty year period following 1664 there existed an Anglicization and anti-Dutch narrative which developed but at the same time Dutch New Yorkers and Dutch-Americans continued on with their traditions. While New York governor Edmund Andros appeared to take “draconian measures” against the Dutch, he still offered promising opportunities to his Dutch friends.252 This displayed how both existed simultaneously. The Dutch residents of the former New Netherland and New Amsterdam developed a new hybrid identity. Before they were Dutch in America and Dutch-Americans, but with an English takeover these individuals were Dutch in an English America and Dutch-Americans within a land controlled by a competing power. Despite initial attempts at an anti-Dutch narrative, Joyce Goodfriend argued that in action the English evoked a policy of toleration over Anglicization, as seen by Andros’ actions. This toleration allowed the cultural diversity which already existed in the area to flourish under the transition and solidification of English rule because it worked both economically and religiously in their favor.253 These developments which occurred set the stage, according to Goodfriend, for a pluralistic society. As the society became more of a monoculture, among Europeans at least, after the first sixty years the Dutch left in New York City began to blend with the English more and more. Some Dutch families married their daughters to English men as a form of upward social mobility, and Dutch youths began to grow up speaking English and attending schools with English schoolmasters.254 By 1740 English became the official language for almost all New Yorkers, although in rural areas Dutch-Americans still held on to their language.255 While this sort of amalgamation occurred between multigenerational New Yorkers as time went on, the essence of ethnic subcommunities remained. Although Goodfriend wrote that it was under the English government that there developed well defined ethnic
252 Joyce Goodfriend, Who Should Rule at Home?: Confronting the Elite in British New York City, (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2017), 27, hereafter cited as Goodfriend, Who Should Rule at Home? 253 Joyce Goodfriend, Before the Melting Pot: Society and Culture in Colonial New York City, 1664-1730, (Princeton, NY: Princeton University Press, 1992), 218, hereafter cited as Goodfriend, Before the Melting Pot. 254 Ibid, 98. 255 Ibid, 188-214. 150
subcommunities,256 it should still be noted that under the Dutch there was still a place referred to as “Land of the Blacks” on Manhattan. In the extended area there that covers the current New York City (such as Brooklyn and Queens), during the Dutch era there were entire communities made up of only Dutch and only English residents. Still, in the extended New York City area that was under initial English rule, there were evidently subcommunities which existed and developed in a plural environment more so than within New Netherland apparently. Initially the Dutch continued to offer services to the poor for the entire city until 1671, but following that year the Mayor’s Court ordered that each church maintain the poor of only their own communities. Records indicated also that by 1686 the only non- Dutch members of the Dutch Reformed Church included one Frenchmen, five Englishmen, and six free African-Americans.257 By 1703 it appeared that most of New York City’s Dutch residents clustered in the north and west wards of the area.258 When the English originally inherited the settlement it had a population of 1,500 in a compact area comprising of Europeans and Africans. Those Africans at that time still made up twenty to twenty-five percent of the population in the city, and their numbers were most likely in addition to the 1,500 and not within it. In total there were about three hundred enslaved and seventy-five free individuals of African descent.259 By 1697 the city’s population was estimated to be “one half Dutch, a quarter part French Protestants, and a quarter part English.” Even into a third and fourth generation Dutch New Yorkers remained the city’s largest population of non-English speakers.260 By 1698 New York City had a population of five thousand and growing.261 The black community as a whole also increased in numbers but in terms of population percentage numbers went down. This could be seen in the 1698 census where their numbers rose to seven hundred but decreased from up to a quarter of the population in 1664 to about fourteen percent.262 African-American numbers grew in 1702 to 970, to 1,362 in 1712, to 1,362 in 1723, and
256 Goodfriend, Before the Melting Pot, 81. 257 Ibid, 83-88. 258 Goodfriend, Who Should Rule at Home? 56. 259 Goodfriend, Before the Melting Pot. 8-10. 260 Goodfriend, Who Should Rule at Home? 49. 261 Goodfriend, Before the Melting Pot. 39. 262 Ibid, 61. 151
to 1,577 in 1731. In terms of city population these individuals made up fourteen percent of it in 1703, seventeen in 1712, nineteen in 1723, and in 1731 the population decreased to eighteen percent.263 The British population of New York City (which Goodfriend classified as English, Scottish, Irish, and Scots-Irish) rose from 29.5 percent in 1695 to 36 percent in 1703 and by 1730 they made up 49.5 percent of the population. By 1730 both the Dutch and French population of the city declined, the Jewish population (both of Sephardic and increasingly Ashkenazi origin) was 1.8 percent, and Germans made up 1.4 percent of the population. Despite their drastic decline in the New York City population, the Dutch still dominated trades in products such as leather, cloth, wood, and stone. This dominance may in part have had to do with the connections held by the NYC Dutch to their brethren that moved to the more upriver and inland areas.264 Between 1700 and 1730 European immigration to New York City from the Caribbean increased dramatically due to connected commercial ties between British merchants and seafarers. Many that came to New York City during those years retained family members in those former areas to manage that connected flow of trade. A number of Europeans from the Caribbean came from Jamaica and Barbados, with youths of Jamaica coming to New York to learn trades. In those early years of the eighteenth century there was also a further influx of Germans, and in 1709 hundreds of Germans from a single province were brought to New York by the English to provide an easy source of labor. These individuals were quarantined before arrival on Governors Island in a similar fashion to how new immigrants were quarantined on Ellis Island over a century later. Of this German group forty-one boys and girls were given apprenticeships to masters in the city. Scottish migration increased during those years as well which contributed to two New York governors with Scottish roots. Most of the Scottish immigrants at this time were lowland merchants and wealthy landowners. In 1744 these immigrants formed the Scots Society of New-York which lasted until 1753 and was succeeded by the St. Andrews Society. A number of Irish immigrants came to New York at this time as well, and countered to previous beliefs that those that came
263 Goodfriend, Before the Melting Pot, 113. 264 Ibid, 155-164. 152
from Ireland at this specific time were Protestant. About twenty to thirty-three percent were Catholic.265 It should also be noted here that an Irish Catholic even served as Governor of New York in the early English period, this of course being Thomas Donagan, 2nd Earl of Limerick who served as governor of the New York province form 1683 to 1688. Unlike under the Dutch where religious diversity was tolerated but forbidden to be openly practiced, after the English takeover Quakers, Lutherans, Jews, and others gained the right to worship their religion publicly.266 By 1695 a Jewish synagogue had been established within the city. It was estimated that around this time there were about twenty Jewish families living in lower Manhattan. In the following year there were about one hundred to one hundred and fifty Jews living in the area. Most of the Jewish immigrants were coming from places such as England, Suriname, and the West Indies. Some of these new Jewish immigrants included the butcher Joseph Isaacs, and the merchants Joseph Bueno and Isaac Rodriguez Marques.267 A greater influx of Ashkenazi immigration came as the years progressed, and in 1728 the majority of congregations to the Shearith Israel temple were Ashkenazi of German, Polish, Hungarian, and other European descent. During the first thirty years of the eighteenth century one of the most prominent Ashkenazi Jewish New Yorkers was Jacob Franks who immigrated from England. One of the most prominent Sephardic New Yorkers was Lewis Moses Gomez who established a prominent trading empire with his sons after arriving in 1705.268 The influx of French Protestants also increased in the initial years. In 1688 a refugee church for French Huguenots was organized, which encouraged more Protestant exiles to pour into the area from France. At the turn of the century there were about four hundred Huguenots in New York City. These individuals made up about just over nine percent of the city’s white population and eleven percent of male taxpayers. In a 1686 letter written by an informant to the governor of New France it was reported that
265 Goodfriend, Before the Melting Pot, 140-150. 266 Ibid, 84. 267 Ibid, 46. 268 Ibid, 151-153. 153
in his short time in New York City about fifty to sixty Huguenot men arrived in the area from Martinique and St. Christopher’s islands. One of the most prominent Huguenot individuals to establish themselves in New York City at this time was an ancestor to John Jay named Augustine Jay. Augustine was a merchant who came to New York after having first gone to South Carolina from La Rochelle, following which he took on a Dutch bride and married in the Dutch Reformed Church in 1697.269 The ancestry of John Jay displayed how anglicization did not truthfully describe the actual makeup of European-America at that time. While John Jay and others like him may have operated under the vail of anglicization he was of mixed European ancestry which he would have been well aware of as well as those in similar situations. Similarly to the Dutch, free Africans-Americans in New York City began to be displaced during the English era as well, although they never truly disappeared from the city’s fabric. The vast majority of free African-Americans all came from the Dutch era due to the much increased role skin color played in enslaved labor. Under the new British government of New York there were virtually no additions to the city’s free black population. A restrictive manumission law was enacted early on, and between the years 1664 and 1712 there were no more than twelve enslaved individuals manumitted.270 In terms of the displacement of free black individuals, as European settlers of Manhattan increased and moved more northward many African-Americans that had already been established in those places were pushed out. Many of the free black individuals who existed and owned land were compelled to sell land to Europeans and move either further northward or off the island entirely. Two families compelled to make this decision were those with the surname De Vries and Manuel. Both families moved from the Bowery to New Jersey in 1683.271 During the British era, New York City also became one of the largest slave capitals within the colonies despite not being based on agriculture. In the 1703 census it was revealed that about forty-one percent of all households owned at least one enslaved individual while that number for Dutch households was about thirty-seven
269 Goodfriend, Before the Melting Pot, 47-51. 270 Ibid, 116. 271 Ibid. 154
percent.272 Thus free African-Americans were being displaced from the initial area granted to them under the Dutch and had to assume new lives in other Manhattan neighborhoods further north if they chose to remain there at all. While those free individuals were displaced, people of African descent remained a constant presence in lower Manhattan because they existed enslaved in nearly half of all European households there. Thus African-Americans were a constant and significant presence in Manhattan continuously from 1625-26 all the way up to the present day. This is not to say that it was only Europeans who owned enslaved individuals in the early British era. As odd as it may seem being that the institution of enslavement had developed into something race based, some African-Americans themselves participated in owning enslaved Africans. Two of such men were John Fortune and Peter Porter. Fortune was a cooper and in 1724 he manumitted a women he owned by the name of Maya as well as her son Robin. Following the manumission John Fortune ended up marrying Maya. Peter Porter in 1720 manumitted a women named Nanny enslaved to him, but her manumission was to be granted upon his death. During this time in the city’s history some African-Americans were able to possess firearms which was something unheard of in other areas of American history. The African-American farmer Solomon Peters lived a successful life in the Bowery during the last decades of the seventeenth century. Peters belonged to the local Dutch Reformed Church and along with his wife Maria Anthonis Portugues had eight children, four boys and four girls. Following Peters’ death in 1694 he left his home and household goods to his wife, and to his sons he left his tools, weapons, and instruments of husbandry. Of the various weapons Peters left to his boys were “guns, swords, pistols, and the like.”273 While it may seem easy to group African-Americans into one distinct group of colonial New York City’s population, in actuality there was quite a diversity among them. The black population of New York City during that time was a heterogeneous community. One aspect which brought them together was the fact that all existed as individuals under the domain of foreigners with a higher level of legal authority. There existed free African-Americans that were the descendants of the 1625-1626 cohort, in
272 Goodfriend, Before the Melting Pot, 76. 273 Goodfriend, Before the Melting Pot, 116-117. 155
addition to that cohort those both free and enslaved that were native born both before, during, and after the English takeover, multi-generation and first generation individuals of African descent transported to New York from the Caribbean, South America, and Atlantic world, individuals of African descent from other colonies, and individuals who were transported directly from places throughout African regions such as various ones throughout West Africa as well as Madagascar. The large island off the south east coast of Africa was actually a popular spot during the colonial British period for smuggling slaves into New York as well as transporting them through legal routes. Beginning in the 1690s various New York merchants built relationships with pirates to smuggle hundreds of individuals from Madagascar to be enslaved in New York. The East India Act of 1698 was set up to help deter individuals from engaging in piracy and smuggling but this hardly ceased. In 1721 a vessel arrived in New York Harbor illegally containing one hundred and seventeen individuals from Madagascar to be enslaved. Between 1701 and 1715 about two hundred and nine enslaved individuals were recorded to have arrived from Africa, two hundred and seventy-eight from the Caribbean. Throughout the following fifteen years those numbers drastically changed with two thousand and eighteen enslaved individuals coming to New York City from the Caribbean and six hundred and thirty- three from Africa. In total combining that thirty-year period about seventy-one percent of the enslaved individuals were brought to New York City from the Caribbean. Most of the ships carrying enslaved individuals at this time were small, in referencing this Joyce Goodfriend noted a ship arriving to the city from Barbados carrying two African- American men and two women to women to be enslaved locally in the area as an example.274 In referencing the diverse makeup among the African-American community New York minister John Sharpe wrote in reference to the dead that individuals were “buried in the Common by those of their country and complexion” and that their funerary rites were performed “at the grave by their countrymen.”275 In this sense it can be seen that
274 Goodfriend, Before the Melting Pot, 110-113. 275 Eric R. Seeman, "Reassessing the “Sankofa Symbol” in New York's African Burial Ground," The William and Mary Quarterly 67, no. 1 (2010), 104. 156
at this time in New York’s history its African-American population had differences amongst themselves in reference to cultural origins, language, and religion. Another thing which should be noted is the area in which members of the African-American community were buried. When Trinity Church was established on Manhattan African- Americans were beginning to become baptized and communicants within that congregation, but despite their participation they were denied the right to be buried within the churchyard cemetery.276 This begs the question, where were African- Americans buried? The location of where such a resting place existed for the city’s black population could be seen on a map of New York City from about 1755. This site was listed on the map as “Negros Burial Ground,” and it was situated within that map between Broadway and the fresh water pond at the city’s edge.277 Interestingly this area was largely forgotten until relatively recently when it was discovered during preliminary archeological research for the 1991 construction of a federal office building. In 1993 the site was designated a New York City Historic District, and in 2006 it became a National Landmark.278 The National Park Service’s website also provides various archeological reports which detail in multiple volume works on the archeological, biological, and historical data found during following the sites excavation. Some of the artifacts found include rings, coins, at least one thimble, sleeve links, shroud pins, beads, and a variety of other items carried by the deceased. Overall, when the English took over New Netherland the demographic makeup began to change but the multicultural makeup which began early on with the Dutch continued. With New Netherland split into various colonies each would develop as a colony of its own. New York and New Jersey were where the bulk of New Netherland’s Dutch population existed within and Manhattan existed as their capital. When that realm and capital became English the Dutch were forced to become increasingly an ethnic minority as more and more Europeans of British descent arrived. While in a sense the Anglicization process appeared to be succeeding after the first sixty years of New York
276 Goodfriend, Before the Melting Pot, 91. 277 G. Duyckinck, A plan of the city of New York from an actual survey, anno Domini, M[D]CC,LV, [New York?, 1755] Map, https://www.loc.gov/item/73691802/. 278 Christopher Moore, “New York’s Seventeenth-Century African Burial Ground in History,” National Park Service, (April 26, 2019), https://www.nps.gov/afbg/index.htm. 157
City’s English era, ethnic communities continued to exist. The flow of new immigrants continued to arrive on Manhattan’s shores along with enslaved Africans who were forcibly brought there. Various ethnicities and religious sects lived amongst themselves and worshiped with their own groups, but they all still existed in the same city where they could hardly avoid interacting with each other. Once those interindividuals began to establish their lives and build families, more and more then spread out further into the frontier. With Anglicization came a period where the Dutch history of the land between the Connecticut and Delaware appeared to be forgotten, but it was hardly gone from the area in spirit.
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Chapter 10: The Empire State and Nation
While colonial New York and the other English colonies taken from the Dutch lasted significantly longer than they did under the West India Company, like all things in history the colonial era also came to pass. Soon a movement would sweep throughout the thirteen British colonies north of Spanish Florida which would lead to the foundation of the United States of America. The American Revolution was not the first revolt against a larger empire, however. In an earlier section the Dutch War of Independence against Spain was briefly discussed, and it was through that war which initially brought Europeans to the area between the Connecticut and Delaware. Some have drawn connections between the Dutch War of Independence and the foundation of the United States while others had remarked that this was of no significance at all. Regardless of the conclusion one may come to, the Dutch had already become an established global power by the time of the American Revolution as well as an essential part of colonial Americas history. The Dutch past in British America was a very real one and the descendants of that past were very real colonists in British America and the United States, as Martin van Buren could attest to. Speaking of the eighth president of the United States, Martin Van Buren indeed held roots in that very Dutch-American history. President Van Buren was born or baptized in Kinderhook, New York on the fifth of December about nine months before the Treaty of Paris ended the American Revolution. The father of the president, Abraham Van Buren, served in the American Revolution as a captain in the 7th Regiment of the Albany County Militia. Martin and Abraham’s earliest ancestor in colonial America came directly out of the Dutch period having arrived in New Netherland aboard the ship d’Endracht in 1631. This Van Buren ancestor went by the name Cornelis Maessen and he came to initially settle in Rennselaerswyck. It was presumed that Maessen originated from a small village in Gelderland called Buurmalsen, given that his surname was sometimes listed as “van Buurmalsen.” Although initially indentured to Killian van Rensselaer for a term of three years labor, Cornelis was eventually able to gain enough money to in 1646 purchase a Manhattan home and
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plantation on the Hudson River next to that of Wouter van Twiller and Thomas Hall. The area today where the Van Buren ancestor’s home would have sat was near the current Christopher and Fourteenth Streets.279 It is no secret that Martin Van Buren was the only president to have learned English as a second language, and this fact showed how various generations of Dutch-Americans beyond Manhattan Island would have continued to be holding onto their Dutch identity at the time of the American Revolution. Many of the Dutch-American families that came from the New Netherland area indeed continued into the present day as could be seen by the Holland Society of New York and its sponsored journal da Halve Maen which had been ongoing since 1922. A detailed history was written on Cornelis Maessen and all of his American ancestors in 1913 by his descendant Harriett C. Waite Van Buren Peckham. Within her 1913 work Peckham briefly detailed the Dutch history in New Netherland, and stated that her Dutch ancestors “played such a large part in the making of history in the Empire State of New York.” Coming from a Dutch background Peckham would have been one of the few European-Americans in 1913 not to hold the Anglo-centric bias regarding the United States. In her introduction on the Dutch influence in America Peckham wrote that it was “but of a simple truth” that the framers of the United States “had no better model in all the past to consult than the one furnished by the seven provinces of the Netherlands.”280 A contemporary individual who made links between Americas founding and the Netherlands was Wyger R. E. Velema. In citing Dutch revolutionary Pieter Paulus, Velema wrote that he chose to include in his four volume 1775-1777 work Elucidation of the Union of Utrecht a full copy of the United States Articles of Confederation to imply that the sixteenth century Union of Utrecht may have influenced the political struggles which led to the formation of the United States. It was of Velema’s opinion that many in the Netherlands during the American revolutionary era would have
279 Harriett C.W. Van Buren Peckham. History of Cornelis Maessen Van Buren who came from Holland to the Netherlands in 1631,and his descendants, including the genealogy of the family of BLOOMINGDALE who are descended from Maas, a son of Cornelis Maessen. (Brooklyn, NY: Tobias A. Wright Printer and Publisher, 1913), 25-28. 280 Ibid, 17-18. 160
drawn connections between the American Declaration of Independence and their own declaration of independence i.e. the Act of Abjuration.281 Both Peckham and Velema drew notions a century apart from each other that the Dutch fighting for liberty against the Spanish and Catholic kingdom had comparisons to the American colonists fighting for liberty against the expanding British kingdom. William H. Riker argued completely against that notion. He wrote that it was absolutely false that “the framers of the United Stated Constitution drew heavily on the Dutch experience.” Still, he did point out that the Netherlands were mentioned more than any other European country second only to the British kingdom at the Constitutional Convention.282 Riker had an excuse for the Netherlands being brought up by the framers of the constitution however, which he attributed to British and French writers that discussed Dutch history in their works. According to Riker, anything related to Dutch history and public law that may have influenced the framers of the Constitution was in actuality due to Anglo-French commentaries and not the Netherlands at all.283 Getting into the philosophical ideas of what influenced the motives of dead founding fathers is not the purpose of this inclusion. Riker conducted his study in 1957 and Velema in 2018. Peckham wrote in 1913, but her Dutch and familial heritage would have influenced her bias against the Anglo-centric narrative. While each individual discussed somewhat different things, all still drew upon the founding of the United States and presented different perceptions of a centuries old narrative. What is important is that whether the Anglo-American founding fathers of the United States knew accurate history of the Dutch Republic or not, the Netherlands was already a valuable part of United States history. This is something Riker appeared to have forgot as he came from a time where the Anglo-centric narrative of the United States still conquered all. The Dutch established the area between the Connecticut and Delaware Rivers as a place of European settlement. They were responsible for putting the “city” in New York City back when it was still referred to as New Amsterdam. The
281 Wyger R. E. Velema, “Republicanism Redefined: How the American Revolution Transformed Dutch Political Culture,” in Beyond 1776: Globalizing the Cultures of the American Revolution, ed. O’Malley, Maria, and Van Renen, Denys, (Charlottesville, VA: University of Virginia Press, 2018), 54-55. 282 William H. Riker, "Dutch and American Federalism," Journal of the History of Ideas 18, no. 4 (1957), 495. 283 Ibid, 517. 161
New Netherland era allowed for the family of the eighth president of the United States and founding member of the Democratic Party to arrive and thrive within New York as well as so many others. It was in the Dutch era where the Hudson River became the first stop for many entering that American story, a truth which continues into the current day. It was also an era which saw a great multitude of diversity added to the area. It is of course worth separating the capital from areas outside of the capital, but an interesting dynamic was set up which both resembled the Netherlands and was new. Similar to the Netherlands there were inland planters outside of the capital, but that capital became a place for business and for them to connect with the outside world as well as patria. A religious toleration existed in Low Country cities which allowed for various Protestant sects as well as Jews to engage in business and refuge. Although public worship wasn’t tolerated so much as private practice, this aspect allowed for the existence of multiple religions to exist in the colony unlike New England or New France. It is true that public worship became legal after the English took over which allowed new evangelical movements to grow and expand, but the presence of a multitude of religions was already a trait within the area at a time when New England was expelling its heretics to the Dutch colony. The constant presence of indigenous individuals at Dutch villages and outposts as well as a population of both free and enslaved individuals of African descent added another layer to that diversity. Unfortunately, in terms of religion a comparison between various Native American and African spiritual aspects which existed alongside the Christian fabric of New Netherland remains not fully explored. One author that did explore the blending and functions of African, indigenous, and European spiritual aspects in another section of the Atlantic world was Katia M. de Queiros Mattoso in her To be a Slave in Brazil. While the situation for Africans in Brazil was different than the colonial United States, it would be fruitful to explore the kinds of processes she discussed in a New Netherland sense or in that for the colonial United States as a whole. Similar to Jamestown in Virginia, the New Netherland era saw the addition of African individuals to the fabric of its European settlement. This was as a time before enslavement was a totally raced based system, but it should still be noted that the 162
individuals brought to both settlements were indeed enslaved. The New York Times “1619 Project” had a number of inaccurate moments in the narratives put forth within it, but the project authors still served a valuable purpose in bringing the discussion of a very real group of individuals to the forefront. The 1625-26 cohort of Africans, Iberian- Africans, and Atlantic Creoles were one of the first non-indigenous groups of individuals to exist permanently in the colonies north of Florida. They lived in some of the earliest colonial American communities as well as built the very foundation and fabric of what was then and what would continue to be the most commercial city in North American history. The initial cohort of Africans and the African-Americans of New Netherland and their children have been in the land which developed into the United States longer that nearly every other group excluding a select few. The families of the freed members of the 1625-26 cohort were also some of the oldest free black families and landowners in the future United States. Despite this fact the history of those people continues to be studied as something apart from rather than intertwined with the European society that those African communities existed within. By the time the English took over the colony a system of enslavement centered on racial background was already reaching its maturity, but they could not take away from the fact that there were already free communities of African-Americans throughout the area. While a narrative of an Anglo-Saxon colonial America was what filled most narratives throughout the first two centuries of mainstream colonial history, the variety of individuals that lived through those histories are not necessarily the same as those which the books and authors dealt with. While the topics of African-American issues as a whole had by now developed into a vast multitude of interdisciplinary studies, they are still not included alongside mainstream histories widely circulated among the general public. There is still much that can be done with works centered on one specific group, but it is still highly beneficial to have integrated works among the mainstream which note the multiethnic fabric of the United States historically as well. The Delaware Nation in the later colonial era and early republic years are a group of indigenous individuals that have a rich history, yet their Lenape ancestors and other coastal peoples that became displaced during the New Netherland era have much less of a well-documented story. Some from both the academic world as well as the 163
Delaware Nation itself are actively working to change this. Much of the work contemporary Lenape peoples are engaging in to make their history known to the larger public goes back to that of Nora Thompson Dean, whose indigenous name was Touching Leaves. It is believe that Dean was one of the last full-blooded Lenape individuals as well as a fluent speaker of the Unami Lenape dialect. Dean engaged in taking an active role in bringing Lenape history and culture to the forefront by working with anthropologists and historians through museum, university, and symposium work to preserve the ancient customs of her tribe.284 Following in the footsteps of Touching Leaves, Lenape elders brought their culture back to the New York area with the 2008 establishment of the Lenape Center to be based on Manhattan. Since its foundation the Lenape center had engaged in a variety of symposiums, workshops, programs, and exhibitions to actively bring a Lenape presence back to their indigenous homeland. About one year following the foundation of the Lenape Center members of Lenape heritage in a partnership with the Collegiate Church of New York participated in a ceremony referred to as “Healing Turtle Island.” The Collegiate Church traces its origins to the 1628 arrival of Dominie Michaelius, thus making it one of the oldest continuous church communities in the United States. With roots on Manhattan dating back to the initial Lenape displacement, the “Healing Turtle Island” ceremony was an important moment of reconciliation for the Collegiate Church to engage in. 285 By participating in that ceremony alongside members of Lenape descent the Collegiate Church was able to recognize the role its founders played in the suffering and displacement of Lenape within early colonial America.286 One of the most recent projects Lenape Center members participated in was engaging in talks with BKSK Architectures to include in the expansion to Tammany Hall (named for a Lenape chief) elements of actual Lenape representation. This was done with the addition of a new rooftop for the building which consisted of a glass dome intended to represent the shell
284 “Nora T. Dean, Herbalist, 77; of Delaware Indian Heritage,” New York Times, December, 4, 1984, https://www.nytimes.com/1984/12/04/obituaries/nora-t-dean-herbalist-77-of-delaware-indian- heritage.html. 285 “Historical Timeline,” The Collegiate Churches of New York, http://www.collegiatechurch.org/about- us/historical-timeline. 286 Ibid. 164
of a turtle. The spiritual meaning of the turtle in Lenape spirituality had been mentioned much earlier in this work, and the addition of Lenape spiritual elements brings new life to Tammany Hall in ways which mean much more than a simple name or monument. Despite the active work directors of the Lenape Center continue to do, there still does not exist a physical home for the center. This may change in the future. BKSK Architectures had created an architectural rendering for a physical home in Inwood Hill Park, yet there does not yet appear to be any action for the project to be embarked upon.287 In an age where social justice has become one of the biggest political movements in the United States, it is somewhat astonishing that the government of one of its most liberal cities is so stagnant about reconciling with its own past. Accurate perceptions of New York’s indigenous and Dutch past are beginning to enter a greater public discourse in part due to the changing course of discourses in contemporary American society, yet little action persists. More and more individuals are beginning to look at representations of the past within public monuments and works with questions regarding their validity and representations. The work done regarding Tammany Hall is one example of changes made to create more inclusive representations of the past and present, which was due to the active work by the Lenape Center. The current seal of the City of New York, which is now just over one century old, had finally begun to enter public debate. The seal was designed about a decade and a half after the unification of the five boroughs, and it depicted representations of the Dutch era which Lenape Center co-founder Joe Baker called “cartoonish.” First off, the date on the seal reads “1625” which would symbolize the existence of the initial Walloon settlers on Governors Island, not Manhattan. It should also be noted as addressed earlier that the European settlement on Manhattan was not “purchased” until one year later. It was not incorporated into a city until 1653, it did not become New York City until 1664, and it did not encompass land beyond Manhattan
287 Joe Baker and Hadrien Coumans, “Home in Lenapehoking,” Urban Omnibus, (February, 6, 2020), https://urbanomnibus.net/2020/02/home-in-lenapehoking/. 165
until 1868. The image on the seal depicts a colonial Dutchman and Lenape man, wearing a loincloth, which Baker also called “very stereotypical.”288 From Baker’s viewpoint he considered the seal to be ignorant of the destruction done to his people. The need to replace faulty images of the past is not one agreed upon by all however. Historian of Manhattan Robert Snyder argued that “erasing the old seal” would cause the public to “lose the ability to understand the similarities and the differences between the past and the present.” A replacement of the seal does not necessarily mean erasing it however, as the past can never be erased. Changing the seal of New York, which does not appear to be happening any time soon, in the most basic sense means coming to terms with the reality of what that the past actually resembled. Without the displacement of indigenous individuals, in this case Lenape, New York would never have been able to expand as a European settlement, and the same could be said for the United States in general. This is something much of the United States still needs to come to terms with. Founders of the Lenape Center argue that representation of their tribal members as ambassadors to the United Nations and United States would greatly help to remedy this. While in the case of the current NYC seal New York Mayor Bill de Blasio stated that a good question was asked, that is all he had said on the topic.289 Those of the Lenape Center are indeed helping to bring indigenous cultural awareness back to New York’s public, but there is still much work to be done. A permeant home and cultural center at Inwood Hill Park like the one proposed by them and BKSK Architectures may indeed be a good answer, but it does not seem to be one the current New York City government is actively engaged in supporting. Lenape Center founders have for over the past decade been engaging in active work to shift the understanding of indigenous history of the United States, but shifting a narrative is hardly something they can do alone. In terms of New Netherland, historians and scholars are still debating about how they could bring a more accurate
288 Dana Rubinstein, “N.Y.C. Seal, With a Native American in Loincloth, Faces Scrutiny,” New York Times, (July 27, 2020), https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/27/nyregion/seal-nyc-native-american.html, hereafter cited as Rubinstein, “N.Y.C. Seal.” 289 Ibid. 166
understanding of the past to a wider audience. During a 2014 roundtable discussion on the current state New Netherland studies with fellow scholars of that period issues in the field at a primary and secondary school level were brought up. Dennis J. Maika pointed out that a superficiality of understanding as well as historical inaccuracies continue to exist in formal education regarding topics related to Dutch New Netherland. To remedy this problem he suggested to his colleagues that they each reflect on how their own areas of special interest could be made more accessible and appealing to a much wider public audience.290 Andrea Mosterman seconded Maika’s suggestion on the basis that outside of academic circles New Netherland remains a lesser known aspect of American history. She stressed the importance of presenting an inclusive narrative that represented all of the different types of individuals that existed in the colony.291 To do such a thing requires that the myth of an Anglo-centric colonial America be broken down. America today is a very diverse place ethnically along with its classrooms, and colonial America was diverse as well. Similarly, just as America today is connected to a larger global environment it was connected to a larger global environment during the colonial era as well. Due to the diversity which exists within the nation today it is essential that when discussing the past that the very real diverse elements are included within that. This is why New Netherland becomes a useful tool even though it was not the only period that diversity existed within colonial America. The colony was Dutch, not Anglo-Saxon, and through the Dutch it was a place where people from throughout the Protestant and Atlantic worlds all came and interacted in an American, European, Atlantic, African, and global context. One example of what could be done in classrooms would be drawing links between the East and West India Companies. American schools today have a large population of Asian-American students, and while there were not necessarily Asian peoples recorded as being in New Netherland, the Dutch that operated that colony were simultaneously embarking upon endeavors precisely within
290 Dennis J. Maika, Mark Meuwese, Andrea C. Mosterman, Susanah Shaw Romney, D.L. Noorlander, Anne-Marie Cantwell, and Diana diZerega Wall, "Roundtable: The Past, Present and Future of New Netherland Studies," New York History 95, no. 3 (2014), 473, http://www.jstor.org/stable/newyorkhist.95.3.446, hereafter cited as Maika, Meuwese, Mosterman, Shaw Romney, Noorlander, Cantwell, and diZerega Wall, "Roundtable.” 291 Ibid, 486. 167
the Asian side of the world. Bridges could be made between the east and west as that even in 1492 Asia was a core goal of transatlantic voyages. From that point onward the path to a globally connected world was inevitable, and while these kinds of studies have picked up much steam in academia, contemporary public narratives and educational works at a primary and secondary level have not yet fully followed through with presenting these narratives and connections. In the same 2014 roundtable discussion D. L. Noorlander wrote that the perception of an Anglo-centric narrative of early American history cannot be undone without first “highlighting England’s European competitors on the Hudson River, perhaps sometimes at the expense of other worthy subjects.”292 Although highlighting England’s competitors would indeed aid in undoing an Anglo-centric narrative, it in no way would have to be at the expense of other worthy subjects. To even make such a statement like that is somewhat neglectful. The “1619 Project” put forth an Afrocentric narrative of the United States and the Dutch of the Hudson and the Atlantic world were brought up not even once. The Dutch were not the only individuals to exist within New Netherland, thus even when discussing an Anglo-centric narrative in terms of even New Netherland it would take more than a discussion exclusively on the Dutch to undue such a narrative. The Africans and African-Americans that existed within the Dutch colony continued to be a very real community and ethnic group throughout the thirteen British colonies and United States, and needless to say they were not Anglo-Saxon. The Anglo-centric narrative could even be undone using single individuals from within New Netherland. When teaching a class in a predominantly Caribbean-American area utilizing the fact that one the first non-indigenous individuals to live not just off the Hudson but within the colonial United States in general (Juan Rodriguez) would be an interesting and valuable way to shift the Anglo-centric narrative. Similarly, when teaching a predominantly Italian-American class, perhaps in Long Island or New Jersey, an interesting way to shift the narrative would be to discuss how the Venetian Cesare Alberti was also one of the first individuals to live within, get married, and have children
292 Maika, Meuwese, Mosterman, Shaw Romney, Noorlander, Cantwell, and diZerega Wall, "Roundtable,” 478. 168
not just in New Netherland but the future United States as well. Christopher Columbus is often used among Italians to claim they were in America first, but Columbus was nowhere near the colonial United States. Cesare Alberti was not just the first colonial Italian resident, but by marrying a Dutch woman his children would have been some of the first Americans born with a multi-European heritage. A similar argument could be made for the children of Anthony Jansen and Grietjen Reyniers. Thus by introducing a narrative of a group of blended individuals in a colony claimed by the Dutch would be an interesting alternative to one that simply replaced an Anglo-centric narrative with one that was singularly Dutch-centric, Afrocentric, or any other kind of centric. The Atlantic world was valuable part of the development of a modern American existence, and the Dutch were an essential part of that Atlantic world. The Dutch example is by no means the only one which could be used to explain the development of an American identity, but it is a very real history and example of a place where that process occurred. What came with the initial voyage of Henry Hudson as well the English companies that chartered voyages to Virginia and New England eventually led to a new culture being developed which would come to encompass landmasses which extend beyond one within the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. That new culture which developed was not identical to that of the mestizaje which developed in Latin America, but a blending between worlds was an essential part of the development of North American society and culture. There was a real displacement of indigenous peoples which founders of the Lenape Center call a “genocide,” and racial hierarchies indeed developed and existed for a long time in United States history. Yes despite this the society and culture within the United States was hardly one made up of European elements alone. From its very beginning, even before the first Europeans landed upon the shores north of Spanish Florida, the processes which would come to connect the future United States to a global world were already in development. As soon as the first settlers arrived in places such as along the Hudson River a multicultural landscape had already been developed as the Atlantic world was bringing various peoples together. Utilizing examples such as New Netherland to the fullest sense could exist as a valuable tool for bringing about a narrative of the United States which connects individuals rather than divides them. 169
To appropriate the words of Robert Snyder, it is important to “understand the similarities and the differences between the past and the present.” Yet, where those similarities and differences exist the past remains a very real aspect of the present whether that past be visible or not. While Snyder thought erasing the past was a real threat, what is written down by a select group of people is not always an accurate depiction of the past as it actually existed. No one could go back in time, and thus individuals can see in the past whatever they choose to see it. For two centuries an Anglo-centric narrative flourished based on the power structures which came about during the struggles to gain dominance in a rapidly changing world. As more and more Europeans came to this nation governed with and Anglo-centric power structure, many non-Anglo peoples were encouraged to abandon their own cultural ways and assimilate in order to vie for their own success. While many lost their culture in the process others were able manipulate this structure in order to blend their own cultural elements with others already existent. From its very inception the Anglo-centric narrative did not accurately describe the colonial America of its past nor how it progressed centuries into the present. The United States of America always had multicultural elements within it, even before such a nation or idea of one had been articulated. While many choose to take from the past what is convenient to build a national history they see fit, the lives of those that came before can never be erased. Utilizing the diversity of lives, narratives, and histories of Americas multicultural past brings forth a more open truth which creates a more inclusive shared history all within the nation can take part in.
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